Language and Perception: The Disadvantages of the English Language

[Jack Raiden]

What are some of the disadvantages that come with using language (specifically English) and words to formulate our thoughts?

Language is a tool. It is a structure upon which we give form to our ideas and thoughts but what disadvantages does it give? When we build a structure in real life there are certain weak points that arise as it gets bigger, how does that happen when we build our thoughts with languages? What are some of the weak points of English?

What I'm talking about is using language to define our own ideas and concepts, not about communication between people. We all know about miscommunication between people.

Take for example riding a bike. There are certain ways you can say its fun to ride a bike in your mind but they imply different meanings.

Analyze this:
"I like to ride my bike."

There are certain subtle assumptions being made in this simple statement. Verbs have a direction and in this case "I like" implies that I am the one that is consciously deciding that riding my bike is fun. This statement gives possession of the activity to the speaker and somehow any attack on the activity feels like an attack to me since I own that activity.

"Bike riding is fun."

Here is another set of assumptions being made. In this case the speaker is assigning the concept of fun to bike riding but not necessarily giving possession of the activity to his/her self.

"Bike riding appeals to me."

In this case the verb "appeal" defines that bike riding is a pleasant activity for myself and makes no assumptions of its appeal to others. It also distinguishes the activity from myself and doesn't give me possession of the activity.

I may just be nitpicking at the assumptions made by western thought but I figure this is a worthy topic to discuss. Does anyone else have some common examples of the subtleties of using language to define our thoughts or a subject or concept that English poorly describes?

Here is another one:

"Do not think of a purple elephant."

What do you have to do to follow the statement above? First you have to think of a purple elephant and then you have to put a slash through it but doesn't thinking about a purple elephant defeat the purpose of not thinking about a purple elephant? I present the conundrum of negative statements.

[nowt]

Of all the things I'm not thinking of, many are purple elephants.

Even when I think of a purple elephant, there are an infinity of p. elephants, I do not think of.

Even when I think of infinities of p. elephants, there are... etc.

[XFire35]

When you mentioned a purple elephant, I still thought of grey. I was thinking about my grey t-shirts at the time too...

To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. may interest you somewhat if you have not already read it before.

[Hadugh]

"My girlfriend", as a contraction relative to "My friend who is a girl". It's ambiguous to whether it's a girlfriend as in a romantic partner, to a girlfriend who is a friend who is a girl.

I remember that from my mum a few years ago comparing languages which give the sex of someone by default, like Arabic/Japanese.

[Fang]

You'd probably enjoy "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson. I'm about halfway through but I will say it's a good read thus far. I'm not sure if I believe everything he says but it's interesting all the same.

The tendency for words to have multiple layers can be a problem. Multiple meanings for one word etc. Idioms etc.

For the opposite answer to your question, a huge advantage to English is its inherent redundancy. We have so many words which mean basically the same thing that subtleties were allowed to develop. We can be very very precise but at the same time imprecise because we can't differentiate some major time/space points.

[thod]

Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs. I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

[StreetScooby]

What are some of the disadvantages that come with using language (specifically English) and words to formulate our thoughts?


Language is firmly rooted in common experience.
Some cultures try and expand common experience, others don't.

[Muadib]

There are significant disadvantages to every form of communication, specifically the spoken/written word. Look at ancient Laconian it was a language used solely to give battle directions...this limited the thought patterns of the Spartans using it. English offers a number of ways to express the same complex thought each one filled with its own subtlety. It falls prey to the same issue as any language not enough/too many ways to express one thought based on one persons idea of efficiency or expressiveness in language. For example most NT type people would like and simultaneously hate a language that was logical and simple with specific and clearly defined meanings to words and syllable structures that have sub meanings so as to build words...the danger being that thought could be limited in an Orwellian fashion. An SF would prefer words to have vague or broad meanings and subtlety to the language so that they can express the various different and yet similar emotional observations etc. however they deem is the best way to do it. Also how else are you going to formulate thoughts...your brain is hardwired to use language for everything no matter what kind of language it is...if your brain thought in binary code you would still be using language.

[MikeC]

As a polyglot, English is my favourite language. It is progressively flexible, expressive and easy to pick up.

[Prunesquallor]

I prefer to think of them as complexities one can use, rather than difficulties.

[Warrior]

Despite the sublety, English is a language of extremes. It is easy to say something is hard or soft, but how do you say something is one quarter of the way between hard and soft? There isn't really a word for that - you actually have to say it is half way between hard and soft, or that it is neither hard nor soft, or something similar. Firm doesn't quite do it - there are other concepts behind that word. Sometimes there is a word for half way between two extremes, like lukewarm being halfway between hot and cold, but that can even be interpretted as neither hot nor cold, which isn't exactly the same thing.

[MikeC]

It is easy to say something is hard or soft, but how do you say something is one quarter of the way between hard and soft?

DEpends... is it fluffy? gelatinous? grainy? putty-like? There is no rule to say you would have to describe something with one word, especially if the metric for the variable discrete. How about 27% hard/soft, or 22.446854% soft/hard?

[Muadib]

thats what words like Kind of are for

[Vagrant]

"Do not think of a purple elephant."

What do you have to do to follow the statement above? First you have to think of a purple elephant and then you have to put a slash through it but doesn't thinking about a purple elephant defeat the purpose of not thinking about a purple elephant? I present the conundrum of negative statements.Count to 10 without thinking of the word rhinoceros.

My friend did that to me once. Couldn't do it.

Conversation from an INXP friend:

[23:20:11] Liokae: Interesting fact: Dogs dogs dog dog dogs.
[23:20:35] Liokae: Of course, dogs dog dogs in general, so it's not behavior limited just to the dogs that dogs dog.
[23:20:43] USS Vagrant: ...?
[23:20:49] Liokae: WOO GRAMMAR
[23:21:10] Liokae: Making correct but confusing as fuck sentances since the dawn of language
[23:21:25] Liokae: dogging someone, as in annoying them, etc.
[23:21:55] Liokae: The translated version would be 'dogs that are harrased by other dogs themselves harras other dogs'.
[23:22:20] Liokae: The most well known phrase of that variety probably being that Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
[23:22:49] Liokae: And that fish fish fish fish fish.

[Ither]

@ OP

This is more or less the hypothesis connected to Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir. It is interesting, and unproven.

Many of the posts are besides the point. English is a *natural* not an 'artificial' or mathematical language. As all natural languages, it is grammatically and semanticly redundant.

[Jack Raiden]

@ OP

This is more or less the hypothesis connected to Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir. It is interesting, and unproven.

It's always disappointing when you think you have come up with an original idea and you find that men back to Aristotle have been beating the same dead horse. Darn.

So far, it seems like language is essentially the programming language of our thoughts. Language forms around the common experiences of people so naturally language will have a hard time explaining the uncommon. Also since it forms around the common experiences of people, language does not influence our perspective but our perspective influences our language. Perhaps language even reinforces the assumptions made in a society too.

And since English likes to borrow from a lot of different languages, it has many redundancies so that the speaker can find the right word to describe their proper mix of emotions and thoughts.

I originally asked this question with the intent to possibly describe the "perfect" language but it seems like there is no such thing as a perfect language (that could completely remove miscommunication). Even if there were a perfect language it would just evolve and deteriorate to match the common experience of the people. Rather a "perfect" language would sprout from a common understanding among the people and it wouldn't really matter what the words were as long as everyone understood them the same way.

[Muadib]

Your last point could never happen. If I say Cat you think of an image. That image is more than likely not the same image of a Cat that I have in my mind. So unless you make a language with a billion words and no adjectives because all descriptors are in the words you would get nowhere. Language can be controlled though. Look at French.

[Jack Raiden]

Your last point could never happen. If I say Cat you think of an image. That image is more than likely not the same image of a Cat that I have in my mind. So unless you make a language with a billion words and no adjectives because all descriptors are in the words you would get nowhere. Language can be controlled though. Look at French.

True, but in the hypothetical and theoretical we can pretend to make anything happen. I guess I got carried away.

Language can be controlled? French? I'm going to claim ignorance on this. Could you elaborate?

[Ither]

It merely means that the French Academy settles on the rules for standard literary French.

[Jack Raiden]

It merely means that the French Academy settles on the rules for standard literary French.

Ok, well that would make sense since we have much better global communication now-a-days that languages would become more standardized.

[Ither]

Ok, well that would make sense since we have much better global communication now-a-days that languages would become more standardized.

The French Academy has done this since it was founded in 1635.