Re: does conlanging change your sense of reality?

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:

> My experience, after many years of serious meditation and reflexive observations
> of my own consciousness is that my thoughts form, whole and complete, BEFORE
> they are translated into language.
...... snip much ........
> Thus, it is demonstrably true to anyone who takes the trouble to learn the skill
> and demonstrate it to themselves, that thought comes first, and language comes
> after, and that language cannot effect what can be thought, only which thoughts
> can be expressed and which thoughts remain ineffable.
It's clear enough that some people primarily think non-verbally, and that
one can train oneself to think non-verbally.   But I don't think that proves
that other people's apparently verbal thoughts are *really*, underlyingly,
nonverbal.   I've had experiences where I was having trouble with a
recalcitrant train of thought, and switching languages helped me
restart it more clearly; that seems to suggest that, at least for some
people some of the time, language is the medium of thought and
not merely an epiphenomenon.

This raises another question, in connection with my ongoing study of
people's fluency in their conlangs -- do people whose thoughts are
primarily verbal tend to acquire additional languages (whether natlang
or conlang) more easily or quickly than people whose thoughts are
primarily nonverbal?  It seems that the former would tend to get more
practice at using any given language they're acquiring, and acquire
it faster -- but maybe not.

As for the original poster's question -- yes, to a slight extent, but mostly
the other way around.  Areas where my perception of reality or worldview
are at odds with the lowest-common-denominator worldview
inherent in my dialect of English have influenced some of the ways in
which gjâ-zym-byn's semantics differ from those of English; distinctions
which are important to me, but unwieldy to express clearly
in English, are (I hope) easier to concisely express in gzb.
On the other hand, learning to use gzb's a priori number system has
made me better at mental arithmetic, and learning to use its a priori
postposition system has made me somewhat more attentive to spatial
relationships.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/

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