sapir whorf hypothesis

Sapir and Whorf's hypothesis is that the greater the structural and lexical differences between languages, the greater the diversity in worldview of their speakers.1 I disagree.

Certainly there is great diversity of worldviews in the English speaking world. And certainly hunger is hunger, regardless of language, as is pain, love and even justice.

However, I do believe that the more ornate a philosophy, the more complicated a theoretical structure becomes, the more dependent it is on other ideas formulated in the same language, the greater becomes the difficulty in effectively translating that theory. An academic investigation into theories and thoughts of a culture will naturally focus on the most famous or popular of philosophical works. None of these exist in a vacuum. John Locke's famous Second Treatise on Government is really a rebuttal of the work Patriarcha by Robert Filmer, even though most people attempt to read it on its own, its translation loses power unless Filmer is also translated, and Filmer himself was reacting to his times or other authors, and this record needs also be translated for the full story to be understood.

Even when the works of, say, a Filmer, are not well known, the ideas are likely to most readily pop up in other readings of the same language, and not likely to pop up in any other language.

Similarly, the ideas of a Chinese speaker which have never been translated, no matter how powerful or profound, will never influence those who do not speak Chinese, and those same people will neither be able to respond, or expand upon, the ideas.

Similarly, cultural maxims or sayings which travel without writing still travel in linguistic lines, and often the internal rhyme or meter of them is lost in translation. In addition, those translated and explained as translated will, to some, to be alien and not of their culture, simply by virtue of their alien roots.