Comment by drusenko
18 hours ago
If you are fluent in a second language, you understand that the only way to become truly fluent is not just to learn the tangible aspects - the vocabulary, grammar, references, expressions, etc - you have to learn to think like the language/culture.
It’s a combination of cultural assumptions, facial expressions and affectations, thinking patterns, and a whole cultural upbringing that can lead you to very different mental processes and natural conclusions starting from the same words and phrases.
Language absolutely encodes a certain form of intelligence. A lot of those things are reflected not just in the totality of the culture but the language itself. Being fluent leads you to different thinking patterns and different conclusions when processing in that language.
Absolutely? I don't think it does so much. People speaking different languages seem to have very similar thoughts. It's true that fluency is a wholistic performance, but I don't think there are any particular thoughts that can't be translated.
It is tougher with european languages from the influence of latin and the sort of mutt that is english. They are all pretty related. That being said when I learned spanish I felt the way they put adjectives after the noun in spanish leads to a sort of different thinking pattern. Car red instead of red car. A bunch of more distant languages though there's no European language equivalent for certain words or concepts. I'm not sure about the sentance structures, but if its a lot different than european languages, I wouldn't be surprised if this changes thinking. I've heard in some languages they don't have a concept of "self" or "I".