Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Language and Perspective

Rate this topic


L-C

Recommended Posts

As a bilingual speaker, I've been proficient in English for years. But only since becoming an Objectivist have I realized how much difference there is between various languages. Not just the words, but the meaning of words, even those who are completely analogous.

A good example is the word justice and its Swedish equivalent. Now, we have a word for justice but it's not the same at all. Ours is effectively and most of the time a synonym with equality. Consider the mentality and ideology of the Swedish people and you'll see what this does to the concept of justice. Apart from archaic-sounding tales of "courtroom justice", imagine if the word didn't exist at all, and that the only word you had access to to express it is "fair", as in "The Fairness Doctrine". Interesting, isn't it?

Now look at the effects of the fool. How does the Swedish government treat criminals? Victims? Businessmen?

Perhaps speakers of other languages have stories like this of their own.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a very interesting topic. I would think that one way to get around the problem is to just use the foreign word when you want to use the foreign concept. That's what we do in English, and is the reason for so many adopted non-English-origin words.

Tangentially related to the topic, I'm looking forward to this book coming out.

Experience, Evidence, and Sense: The Hidden Cultural Legacy of English is going to be some kind of explanation of how those three words and the meanings (concepts) are related to British empiricism, and possibly caused it, or lead to it easily.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You have identified something very important. We use language to think and form concepts. Rand explains this in Anthem, in a world without "I" there can be no individual rights, or even any concept of the individual at all.

Another example would be the difference between a dictionary defintion and the meaning held by people. The term "selfish" refers to acting in one's own interests, however, in common parlance, it refers to someone who acts in their own interests without regard for the rights of others - in the eyes of most people, a selfish person is not a individual pursuing their interests, but a brute.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a very interesting topic. I would think that one way to get around the problem is to just use the foreign word when you want to use the foreign concept. That's what we do in English, and is the reason for so many adopted non-English-origin words.

I have to resort to that all the time. Recently I was discussing government force, and there's no Swedish word as all-inclusive as force. Threat/violence/extortion/etc gets old after a few sentences.

Seldom does it swing the other way, though there is one word missing from English, as far as I can tell: the verb "to X", as in "I X [my name]" or "They X Tom, Bill and Sarah".

...in a world without "I" there can be no individual rights, or even any concept of the individual at all.

QED.

...in common parlance, [selfish] refers to someone who acts in their own interests without regard for the rights of others - in the eyes of most people, a selfish person is not a individual pursuing their interests, but a brute.

And how useful it is as a weapon of philosophical war. Distorting its meaning is even better than removing the word altogether, since it occupies the slot of the real meaning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a bilingual speaker, I've been proficient in English for years. But only since becoming an Objectivist have I realized how much difference there is between various languages. Not just the words, but the meaning of words, even those who are completely analogous.

A good example is the word justice and its Swedish equivalent. Now, we have a word for justice but it's not the same at all. Ours is effectively and most of the time a synonym with equality. Consider the mentality and ideology of the Swedish people and you'll see what this does to the concept of justice. Apart from archaic-sounding tales of "courtroom justice", imagine if the word didn't exist at all, and that the only word you had access to to express it is "fair", as in "The Fairness Doctrine". Interesting, isn't it?

Now look at the effects of the fool. How does the Swedish government treat criminals? Victims? Businessmen?

Perhaps speakers of other languages have stories like this of their own.

In Hebrew the word for "just" is tzedeck when means righteous. In the religious context tzedeck means both righteous and saintly. There is no word for charity in Hebrew. The word is tzadakot which is the noun derived from the adjective tzedeck. It means, basically, to give what is due to the other. To be just to the other in terms of what you give.

The word "just" in English is equivalent to "fair". One is admonished to be fair.

Bob Kolker

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have to resort to that all the time. Recently I was discussing government force, and there's no Swedish word as all-inclusive as force. Threat/violence/extortion/etc gets old after a few sentences.

Seldom does it swing the other way, though there is one word missing from English, as far as I can tell: the verb "to X", as in "I X [my name]" or "They X Tom, Bill and Sarah".

The problem when it comes to translation, is that when a person writes in English, he also thinks in English. A concept which is represented by a word with a clear meaning in one language, may not have the same representation in another language. Like you say, "force" is a good example. You could use "makt" (power) or "vold" (violence), but the meaning of the sentence may change slightly. Another example, is "primacy", which has to be completely rephrased to give any meaning. But this is also a fact the other way around, especially when it comes to double meaning. For instance, if I were to translate this Norwegian poem to English, it would be almost impossible to do so without losing the double meaning in the process:

Vi ville ha alt

Vi ville ha alt

Vi ville ha alt

Og vi tok det

Vi tok det

Vi tok det

Med ro

Og med ei stor

Med ei stor

Med ei stor

Klype salt

However, I think it would be wrong to imply that English in some way is "richer" as a language than Swedish or Norwegian. It is merely a question of being creative and able to make use of the language's grammar and vocabulary. The reason one may think English is richer, is that a Swede will naturally translate from English more often than into English. In that way, English becomes the standard with which Swedish vocabulary is compared to, and not the opposite. Although, if Ayn Rand had written (and thought) in Swedish, I am certain that the English-speaking would have the same problems translating her message as the other way around.

Another example of what you're mentioning in the opening post, is the Norwegian expression "Ã¥ gi skattelettelser", which could be translated literally as "to give tax reductions". This is a widely accepted expression, from the right to the left in Norway. The implication is that the government is actually spending money when it reduces the taxes -- money it could be spending on improving public health care or education instead. It it obvious that fighting the social democratic language is a big part in fighting social democratic politics.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another example of what you're mentioning in the opening post, is the Norwegian expression "Ã¥ gi skattelettelser", which could be translated literally as "to give tax reductions".

We got that one too in the form of the phrase, "tax subsidy." To let a corporation keep more of its money is apparently a subsidy. Tangent/ At first thought, this seemed ridiculous to me, but if they allow some politically connected corporations to keep more money and not others, then it does amount to a subsidy since it imbues an unearned market advantage over their competitors./Tangent

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Concepts are objective, which is what makes translation possible. Anti-concepts can also be constructed in any language. Translating from a concept to an anti-concept is an error in translation.

They are objective, but I don't think that is relevant to the point. An abstract concept contains underlying material and sometimes other concepts. If a language lacks enough of the underpinnings of a concept, the nuanced differences can obliterate its intelligibility.

By way of example, "liberty," in Mandarin means something like "running wild without restraint." Clearly this is not what John Locke had in mind in his second treatise. Without a long and detailed explanation about negative duties, it probably seems baffling that anyone should want it. Even without a language barrier, many English speakers lack even the realization of the contradiction in a concept like the "right to healthcare," or the "right to a good job." Many, I'd wager, most, Americans view political rights as simply a claim that you want something really, really bad and should have it.

In any language you could certainly be specific enough to avoid confusion, but the time necessary to explain somethings would be so much that it generally wouldn't happen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

However, I think it would be wrong to imply that English in some way is "richer" as a language than Swedish or Norwegian. It is merely a question of being creative and able to make use of the language's grammar and vocabulary.

But what I was getting at was that the Swedish language is colored by Swedish ideology. There's a reason we don't have a real word for justice. Most Swedes don't acknowledge the concept of justice, apart from their egalitarian view that there is no good and evil apart from equality and inequality, forced or not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a bilingual speaker, I've been proficient in English for years. But only since becoming an Objectivist have I realized how much difference there is between various languages. Not just the words, but the meaning of words, even those who are completely analogous.

A good example is the word justice and its Swedish equivalent. Now, we have a word for justice but it's not the same at all. Ours is effectively and most of the time a synonym with equality. Consider the mentality and ideology of the Swedish people and you'll see what this does to the concept of justice. Apart from archaic-sounding tales of "courtroom justice", imagine if the word didn't exist at all, and that the only word you had access to to express it is "fair", as in "The Fairness Doctrine". Interesting, isn't it?

Now look at the effects of the fool. How does the Swedish government treat criminals? Victims? Businessmen?

Perhaps speakers of other languages have stories like this of their own.

Ayn Rand wrote the following in The Voice of Reason:

"Speaking of concretes, I would say that every civilized language has its own inimitable power and beauty, but the one I love is English—the language of my choice, not of my birth. English is the most eloquent, the most precise, the most economical and, therefore, the most powerful. English fits me best—but I would be able to express my identity in any Western language."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Speaking of concretes, I would say that every civilized language has its own inimitable power and beauty, but the one I love is English—the language of my choice, not of my birth. English is the most eloquent, the most precise, the most economical and, therefore, the most powerful. English fits me best—but I would be able to express my identity in any Western language."

Given my knowledge of languages, Japanese is probably the most eloquent and precise of languages, certainly on the level of English. I would argue that Japanese may even be more precise. This is especially evident to me when discussing gifts or actions regarding for whose sake you are doing it. If the receiving of a particular action is oriented towards the self, the helping verb you use is kureru. An example would be "I got a present from my friend." If it is oriented towards another, you use ageru. An example of this "I gave my friend a present." Such verbs make one define and think about who is receiving the tangible benefits of an action in a more explicit way than English.

A related thing is the word for 'we' in Japanese cannot be written without 'I'. In English, clearly you can write 'we' without even thinking about the word 'I'. In Japanese, the word for 'I' is 'watashi'; the word for 'we' is 'watashitachi'. This is nothing more than making a plural 'I', but notice that it is much more explicit in Japanese that a collective 'we' is simply multiple individuals.

Edited by Eiuol
Link to comment
Share on other sites

At our last local meetup on OPAR Ch. 5 (Reason), one of the attendees is from Lithuania, and pointed out that there is no equivalent Lithuanian word for "arbitrary" in the sense used by Rand. Lithuanians are more direct when they speak to eachother, so rather than politely say, "that is arbitrary", they would simply say, "that is total nonsense".

Are there any books that examine the way ideology influences language over long periods? This is an awesome topic.

Edited by brian0918
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In India, the word "secular" has been distorted to mean religious egalitarianism. Its most common translation in Hindi is a two-part word (Dharma-nirpekshta) where the parts separated by hyphen stand for "religion" and "non preference". So, I think it will literally translate to English as "no preference towards religions".

In political context, courts and lawmakers use the word to mean equal government favors to all religious groups. See this post of mine for evidence.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know this topic is old and has appeared often, but it is completely fascinating. You could possibly argue that the ligusitic mess created during English history led to a language that was forced to accept concepts over social narratives as a means to deal with all the cultures. This made English society more epistemologically prepared to produce a more proper philosophy.

I wonder - if you look at major empires and their languages - could you say the same? That is: take a place where a mix of culture was forced together (linguistically divergent, and culturally divergent), then put that place in a position of political power (i.e.: not a silk roads crossroad in the middle of nowhere with no natural resources), do you get a historical world-leading empire?

Hmm.... Greece? Rome? America? Persia? England?

Does anyone know anything about Chinese? I've heard Chinese speakers use more percentage of their brains (or some such nonsense). Is like English?

In other words, is China's strength just fed off of America's? Could they continue as a great power if America declined?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't even talk to Swedish people about many of the issues we discuss here. The words of ethics (in general) and justice are so distorted that we hardly speak the same language. Of course this has a lot to do with the philosophy most people subscribe to, but there's definately a "language barrier" as well.

To put it simply, Sweden's ideology is inbedded in its language.

Edited by L-C
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I found this book, The New Totalitarians by Roland Huntford (1980).

The author says that the renaissance and the discovery of the indivudual were absent in Sweden; that a medieval serf mentality has always dominated there; that collectivism and submission to authority, the state and the group have become normal. That this is what it has in commmon with Russia.

While European Renaissance writers wrote a lot about individuality etc., the Swedish didn't. There was no Swedish literature before the 18th century.

I think that that has a lot to do with collectivism and egalitarianism being part of the language, and the absence of concepts that became popular during the Renaissace and the Enlightenment.

(Apparently there were ideas in Sweden taken seriously (somewhere in the 1970s, I think), that come right out of Anthem, like actively handicapping the more intelligent children in class.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Extra challenging curricula for giften children is actively discouraged as "elitism". Even if (thinking in terms of "their" system for the moment) it helps everyone. Inequality is practically Satan. There are extremely few real alternatives to public schooling. Thanks for your info about that book, Derek. I'll try to find it, seems like it'd be an interesting read.

You know, all my life I've been a loner. And people have ridiculed and criticized me for it. I refused to go against my character, however, and today I am only starting to realize how valuable that has been. I would never have become an Objectivist otherwise. In real life I've hardly known anyone no one who isn't a socialist. My father is the only man I know who has a distinctly un-Swedish sense of life, ambition and values to be achieved, but he's politically agnostic.

Altruism and statism is everywhere. Schools, philosophy, language, mentality. I owe much to the Internet for enabling me to find that which I had been looking for but was nowhere to be found.

Edited by L-C
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote from the book: "The Swedes have demonstrated the power of that form of semantic manipulation Orwell called Newspeak: the changing of words to mean something else. In this way, thought can be directed, and undesirable concepts elimited, because the means of expressing them have been removed."

Once again, thanks for the link. This should be interesting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...