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[scrdest]

Yeah, I have had clearly won't understand how time/tense will have is working in language

FTFY

[Sergarr]

Yeah, I have had clearly won't understand how time/tense will have is working in language

FTFY

Oh god, that looks physically painful to read.

[wobbly]

Simplifying it to "language determines how you think" might be bull, but saying "language effects how you think isn't". Try modelling time differently in English without breaking the grammatical structure.

Why would we need different models of time? Does physics work differently in different languages? I'm aware other cultures have had different perspectives of time, but it seems more like a misunderstanding of how time works than an important part of culture.

& our culture doesn't have misunderstandings of time? A linear progression of cause & effect has a problem of needing a 1st cause or needs to be infinitely extendable backwards, ... or something else???. Extending backwards to infinity is problematic if time is traveling forwards at a finite rate. It's not that I don't think this problem doesn't have solutions but when I try & think about it my head feels locked in to thinking about time in a certain way. If I try thinking about different ideas to solve the problem in words my tenses end up jumbled, or I end up misusing temporal terms like "simultaneous".

Sorry if I'm derailing a politics thread with philosophy.

[mainiac]

Mildly amusing to me:
http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/05/07/germany-and-the-united-states-reliable-allies/u-s-germany-relations-07/

[quamzie]

Do you guys get personally affected with ukraine events ?( sorry for derailing the thread from philosophy of time/language discussion)

[Guardian G.I.]

Do you guys get personally affected with ukraine events ?( sorry for derailing the thread from philosophy of time/language discussion)

You mean we take part in them personally or simply get emotional about it?
If it's the latter, then the answer is yes, and how! Take a look at the three old Ukraine threads (and a general Russian thread) - they were all closed down due to extreme shit-flinging and flaming.

[Sergarr]

Do you guys get personally affected with ukraine events ?( sorry for derailing the thread from philosophy of time/language discussion)

As far as I know only UR here is from Ukraine. He should be then the only one to be personally affected.

[lijacote]

Imperial politics affect all of us, in every likelihood.

[Sheb]

Comrade P. is going for holidays to Crimea. So I guess he'll be affected in some ways.

[Helgoland]

Mildly amusing to me:
http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/05/07/germany-and-the-united-states-reliable-allies/u-s-germany-relations-07/

Yeah, my countrymen are fuckheads, generally as well as in this specific case.

Wait, P. is going to Crimea? We'll have, like, a field researcher! Awesome~

[lorb]

Affects my sister as well, because her boyfriend is from Ukraine and refusing to visit his family there because he is afraid of being drafted. Which I totally understand. I would be afraid of being forced to go to war as well and try to avoid it.

[Antsan]

but simplifying to 'Language determines how you think' is bull.

I know I think and argue differently in English and German. Even my stance on some political topics shifts depending on what language I use, which can be kind of unsettling.

The thing is that, in natural languages, connotation is such a big thing. Two words with the same denotational meaning can have completely different uses in two different languages. As connotation is mostly about what we think and feel in the first place of course what language you use has an impact on how you think.

@penguinofhonor:
Language is a tool which rests on abstraction. Having different ways of thinking about the same thing is the same as having different (maybe isomorphic) mathematical models for describing one phenomenon. It helps emphasizing different aspects or makes working on certain details easier.

Mildly amusing to me:
http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/05/07/germany-and-the-united-states-reliable-allies/u-s-germany-relations-07/

I agree with Helgoland: Way too much enthusiasm for the military here.

[scriver]

Try translating yogic terms from Sanskrit into English without fudging the meanings. Prana for example is energy, breathe, air. If you translate it as energy you lose the air bit if you translate it as air you lose the energy bit.

Not that I'm in favor of a monolanguage, but I don't think this is actually a huge problem for English. We can just say Prana is a word that means energy, breathe, and air. Just like how English doesn't have a word for deja vu so we just use the French one. I believe this is why English is taking over other languages so effectively.

I actually think the loss (or weakening) of the ability to fluidly form new words out of old ones, like other Germanic languages do (and probably most other languages, but I'm sticking to what I know here), is one of the big faults of the English language. I hate how when I encounter a new word it's much less common that I immediately understand the concept from the word itself alone, simply because instead of being made (fully or partly) out of other English words, it has been taken wholesale from another language that I don't know.

It makes me feel dumb

[Erkki]

Do you guys get personally affected with ukraine events ?( sorry for derailing the thread from philosophy of time/language discussion)

Only a bit, indirectly. I hope there wont be a direct effect in the future.

[BlindKitty]

I will try to reply to a few posts in one, and I won't be quoting, as I'm a little low on time.

Re: languages dying.
    I'm actually a hobbyist in linguistics field (I might have been more if not for the fact that there was no viable way to study the topic for me once I left high school), which might be an interesting information in this discussion. But there are several points I would like to note here:
a) You have me swayed a little towards 'languages dying is a bad thing'. While I see no reason to either fight for it or against it, the argument that languages help preserve cultures (they are not necessary for that, but helpful) is a good one. Of course, I'm still a fan of trying to preserve dying languages in books/other form of data.
b) I do not think that going from majority to minority status (Irish/Gaelic/Welsh) is leading to death of a language, so those once widespread languages are not a good examples of dying ones, IMHO.
c) BGL (Basic Galactic Language) would have a large amount of positive effects, economically speaking. Just imagine how much money is spent on translators in European Parliament.

Re: Polish elections.
a) Our third candidate, Kukiz, the rockman (I have nothing against him being a rockman, BTW; it might have been a misunderstanding, as I was trying to convey shock, not disappointment, in this fact) has nothing to do with our agrarian party (and probably telling him that would result in you being punched in the face, as I'm pretty sure he doesn't like them very much).
b) Do not believe Wikipedia as far as the political party leanings go. In particular, our current ruling party, Civic Platform, is more left to center-left, than anything on the right.
c) I'm so right-winged I have a heart on the right side of my body, so I will cease speaking anymore about that, as that might lead to unintended consequences, and I will leave it to other Poles on the forum to talk about that.