Re: Language and Culture

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_qMEg9GecW9Gc5D08RE99fQeRsm7MpU9p03PQK2Cfs9HOugLed28zHsGkTILYr1CpTb2>
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:07:34 +1200


At 03:46 a.m. 11/07/2007, you wrote:

>These are the people who realized they were
>getting cheated by traders, ASKED to learn how to
>count, and couldn't. (See the Wikipedia page on
>their language

That's not what the New Yorker article says and   Wikipedia is hardly an authority on tricky topics like this.

Even if they are unable to count, you are making a dramatic leap from the Piraha being unable to do something linguistically (which isn't really that remarkable as people who have been brought up deprived of language are unable to learn its complexities when they acquire it later on) to argue that they were unable to recognize something that was happening right in front of them (like noticing that the sun is shining and the grass is growing) which is something that even an unintelligent animal would recognize.

>Whether or not they end up verifying the
>Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis,

You've mentioned Sapir-Whorf twice now. The Piraha language "controversy"* has nothing to do with it so why mention it?

>they are a model for how
>something similar could work in Glorantha.

Except that what you are postulating is nothing at all like what the Piraha think or act but requires humans in general (with only the lightbringers and others being a special case) to somehow avoid comprehending what their own senses tell them.

--Peter Metcalfe

*The only "controversy" is that a feature of its language contradicts something that Noam now says as opposed to something that he was okay with back in the 70s            

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