identifying the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and its limits!

“Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.”

Around 7 billion people live on the planet currently and we all speak different languages. Whorf claims that the languages we speak differ by the way they clearly convey different concepts and not by our different interpretations of this concepts. He believes that by the way each language is structured affects our perception on the world and the environment and also the apprehension we have on various concepts. For example, if we let people who speak different languages, give voices to things such as 'bed' or 'fork' the tone we will give to the object will mostly depend on whether this object is masculine or feminine in our language.

Moreover he remarks that in some languages the use of specifying directions rely on north, south, east, west instead of left, right, in front of and behind. He believes that even though a person might not be able to know the means of right or left and so more, it does not necessarily require that they may not understand its concept.

In addition, Sapir-Whord hypothesis is divided into both the linguistic determinism and linguistic relatively. He states that the linguistic determinist basically determines our thoughts and how one is perceived his or her reality depending on their mother tongue and linguistic relatively obeys the idea of the variation of views we have on different perceptions on concepts due to our mother tongue language.

Another great example that made me really wonder on how different people experience the world affected by their mother tongue is the example of if a two different people that speak different concepts of maintaining directions would enter a hotel and both of their rooms would look exactly the same from left to right the only difference would be that they are placed in front of each other, the person who uses the concepts of left and right would not be able to think of any differences of the placement of the objects whereas on the other hand all the concept of directions and placement of north, south east and west would fully reverse a person's way of thinking.