The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding.
BENJAMIN LEE WHORFMost metaphysical words in Hopi are verbs, not nouns as in European languages.
More Benjamin Lee Whorf Quotes
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We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way – an agreement that holds through our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language.
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A change in language can transform our appreciation of the cosmos.
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My analysis was directed toward purely physical conditions, such as defective wiring, presence of lack of air spaces between metal flues and woodwork, etc., and the results were presented in these terms.
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Speech is the best show a man puts on.
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Most metaphysical words in Hopi are verbs, not nouns as in European languages.
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But in due course it became evident that not only a physical situation qua physics, but the meaning of that situation to people, was sometimes a factor, through the behavior of people, in the start of a fire.
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Anyone who really knows two or more tongues realizes that even that small enlargement of liberty . . . gives him new perspectives, exercizes his soul anew.
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Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.
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We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language.
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By simply doing the reverse and focusing on why you are lucky and grateful things are not worse, you will strengthen and increase your mind’s positive emotions and make yourself happy and even more likely to feel happy in the future.
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Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it. So if, from perhaps some unhealthy desire for sympathetic support.
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Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.
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The world that is coming toward us out of time is going to be very much richer in a mental sense because (among other freedoms) we are going to get a modicum of freedom from linguistic frameworks, from familiar mental habits.
BENJAMIN LEE WHORF