The popular idea that grammar dictates thought is mostly false. For every cherry-picked example, there are countless counter-examples showing that linguistic features don't correlate with cultural traits. Culture and environment shape a language's vocabulary, not the other way around.
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MIT research reveals that large language models develop "spurious correlations" by associating sentence patterns with topics. This cognitive shortcut causes them to give domain-appropriate answers to nonsensical queries if the grammatical structure is familiar, bypassing logical analysis of the actual words.
No language is inherently "faster." Languages that pack more meaning into single words (polysynthetic) are spoken more slowly, while those with simpler words (like English) are spoken more quickly. This trade-off creates a universal, constant rate of information transfer across all human languages.
With non-native speakers as the majority of English users, the language constantly evolves in diverse ways globally. Efforts to impose a simplified, standard version for business (like "globish") are unlikely to succeed because language is a living system that speakers inherently and creatively adapt, making it impossible to control.
No language is 'perfect' because its evolution is a trade-off. Speakers tend toward efficiency and simplification (slurring), while hearers require clarity and precision. This constant tug-of-war drives linguistic change, explaining why languages are always in flux.
Creole languages, born from language contact, strip away needless complexities like grammatical gender and irregular verbs. They are radically easier to learn than older, "gunked up" languages yet remain fully expressive, making them a model of efficient linguistic design.
Thought is fundamentally non-linguistic. Evidence from babies, animals, and how we handle homophones shows that we conceptualize the world first, then translate those concepts into language for communication. Language evolved to express thought, not to be the medium of thought itself.
A language's global status is a function of the social, political, and economic power of its speakers. English, once considered a "crude" language spoken on an island, spread through imperialism and the economic rise of English-speaking nations, not because it is an inherently better or simpler language.
The idea that language creates thought is backwards. Pre-linguistic infants already have a sophisticated understanding of the world (e.g., cause and effect). They learn language by shrewdly guessing a speaker's intent and mapping the sounds they hear onto thoughts they already possess.
Modern audiences struggle with Shakespeare because hundreds of words have subtly changed meaning over 400 years (e.g., 'generous' meant 'noble'). This cumulative semantic drift makes the original text functionally a different language, requiring prior study, not just cultural appreciation, to understand.
Our sense of self isn't an innate property but an emergent phenomenon formed from the interaction between our internal consciousness and the external language of our community (the "supermind"). This implies our identity is primarily shaped not by DNA or our individual brain, but by the collective minds and ideas we are immersed in.
