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Lost in Translation
New cognitive research suggests that language profoundly influences the way
people see the world; a different sense of blame in Japanese and Spanish
Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express
thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or
consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?
Take "Humpty Dumpty sat on a..." Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme
reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have
to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say "sat" rather than "sit." In
Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) change the verb to mark tense.
In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb
if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting
event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire
time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say,
he had a great fall.
In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this
information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your
own eyes, you'd use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or
heard about it, you'd use a different form.