農曆年後，我轉到了見習期中四個崗位中的第二個，也是傳說中最忙的一個 － 企業部。結果我一星期中，有三晚可以差不多八、九時下班，另外兩晚則大概十二點到兩點吧，如果有「刁」的時候，週末也需要工作至深宵。
昨晚九時多，當我正審閱某上市公司的公告直至天昏地暗的時候，忽然想到今天的瑜珈服又是白帶了。朋友的聚會又不能去了。打算義務做的法律研究又得延期了。有點難過，甚至又開始懷疑，我幹嗎會在這裡？為甚麼？
十時多，我決定回家才再繼續工作。在地鐵車廂中，我忽然想起了以前的他和自己。直到現在，我才真正體驗到他當時面對的壓力：沉重的工作、抱恙的父母、刁蠻任性的女朋友……想到自己當時動輒便為了他因為加班而遲到或爽約而大發脾氣，我的確有些歉疚。罷，就當是給自己上了一課吧，也許這份體會，可以讓將來的我成為一個更好更體貼更會諒解的伴侶。
同時，我為自己目前的無憂無慮感恩。工作雖然繁重，但內容具挑戰性，最重要的是，我知道自己為了甚麼投身法律界。我真心地覺得我做的事都是有意義的。家庭方面，我也完全無後顧之憂，早年的煩惱已慢慢解決，現在回到家，我幾乎可以當個公主！好幸福！
然後，黑莓響起。檢查完電郵後，我一抬頭，瞥見地鐵車廂玻璃窗中的自己，我才發現，我老了。頂多只能算是殘花敗柳。真的沒有本錢和心思跟小妹妹競爭了。一絲感慨、荒涼和孤寂油然而生。淡淡的。熟悉的。赤裸的。
2015年3月30日星期一
2015年3月29日星期日
還是有人喜歡你，為什麼依然單身?
當各種交友活動和相親節目在這個城市流行，單身也就在這個城市開始蔓延。似乎很多人都在為這個城市裏單身的人們著急，單單這些單身的人們沒有著急。
我想，單身無非就兩個原因，一個是太看得起自己，一個是太看不起自己。如果還有第三個原因，那就是有時候太看得起自己，有時候太看不起自己吧。
我不知道我是其中哪個原因，但我喜歡流連於這個羣體中，和城市裏一羣單身男女吃喝玩樂，胡侃亂侃，好不快活。有時候會將每個人的心理解析個遍，然後每個人都看著我驚訝不已問你怎麼知道，可是到最後卻都沒有一絲改變。我開始問自己，也開始問著每一個人，關於單身這個問題你怎麼看。
還是有人喜歡你，為什麼依然單身?我聽到的回答總是那麼幾個，沒有人喜歡我啊，對的人沒有出現啊，云云。我最喜歡的回答，還是一個朋友告訴我的，單身與喜歡無關。
每次聚會回到家，空蕩蕩的房間曾經無數次讓我惆悵，我猜想他們會不會和我一樣，每次出來玩樂啊鬧啊看著活潑開朗好不自在，回到家關上門只剩下感傷，想有個人可以陪在身旁。可是也僅限於想想，依然單身。
無論多少理由單著，其實都敵不過一句對的人沒出現。至於對的那個人是什麼樣子，我想你並不知道。即使你固執地告訴我你知道自己想找的是個什麼樣的人，我也會固執地説，你並不知道。
除了那些你喜歡著他但是他不喜歡你的這些特殊羣體，他們知道對的人就在那，只是擁有成為了一種奢望。我很想談談對的那個人為什麼一直都沒有出現。
你最喜歡的事情就是等待，等那個對的人出現。你説都等了幾十年了，還再差一兩年嗎。我並不這麼看，幾十年了都沒有出現，已經不是一個時間的問題了。
在我們的生命中，遇到了各種各樣的人，經歷了各種各樣的故事，時間給了我們足夠多的機會，可是那個對的人始終沒有出現。並不是我們要把地球上每個人都瞭解個遍才能確定哪個是對的人，或許是我們自己出了些問題，並沒有準備好去迎接這個對的人。
世界上沒有一個人是可以完全為你準備好，完全與你吻合的。所謂那些準備好的人，大抵都是他在某些地方特別吸引我，感動我，然後他其他的條件和特質我都可以忽略掉，如此便可以在一起了，成為了準備好的人。
你那麼怕錯了。怕這是一個錯誤的人，怕這是一個錯誤的感情，錯誤的選擇。你不敢去確定這是不是你要找的人，你甚至會失去了勇氣去瞭解。所以在你沒有確定這是一個對的人和對的感情的時候，你不會考慮去開始。
你還怕的還有很多，你怕他不靠譜，怕萬一開始了，你陷進去了，你愛上了，中途他拋棄了你怎麼辦，那該有多受傷多痛苦。
有一次我問一個女孩，她就告訴了我這樣一個答案，不確定他會一直對我這麼好下去，所以不敢去開始。我還見過這樣一個女孩，喜歡她的那個男孩，一如既往的對她好，包容，接納，關心。女孩的脾氣我知道真不是一般人都接納的。女孩的一席話卻讓我驚歎不已，他為什麼會對我這麼好，他在忍著他的脾氣，就是為了得到，一旦他得到了，等她愛上他了，他就會爆發，不再好脾氣了。
原來壞脾氣是一種不愛，好脾氣也是一種不愛。其實無論在試探還是在懷疑，都想去驗證一件事情，他到底會不會一直對我好下去，會不會中途把我拋棄了。如果不能確定這些，那麼寧願不要開始。
她們堅信著，對的那個人會給她們一個心安。可是感情這個東西，恰恰經不起這些考驗和猜測，考驗著考驗著，始終看不到希望，也就繼而絕望，感情就漸漸沒了，然後受傷。
然後她們又驗證了自己：我沒有選擇開始是對的，他根本堅持不住，不會永遠對我好。人總是這麼奇怪，越是不敢肯定的東西，就越是懷疑，越是懷疑，就越是想驗證自己的懷疑，結果事情真的就那麼發生了。
不説吸引力法則會怎麼講這個原理，單單從心理學上講，這個東西也很好理解：人寧願去驗證自己是對的，也不願意去相信事實是好的。為了驗證她們“他會中途放棄，會傷害我”的結論，她們會蒐集各種跡象來證明，會不斷挑戰來驗證，結果真的就發生了。
對於這個問題，我又和她們有過交流，人家也會擔心你不愛，會擔心你中途放棄呀。在聽到這樣的答案後，我終於沒有再説話：如果開始，我肯定不會放棄他的。
歸根到底，這就是一個值得的問題。關於我值不值得被愛，值不值得被一直愛。當你內心覺得自己不值得的時候，就會將這種東西投射出來，放到別人身上：你不是認為我值得被愛嗎?證明給我看啊。然後無論他怎麼證明，你都覺得不夠。他怎麼表決心，你都覺得他會變。
自我價值是個很微妙的東西，我們常常感覺不到自己的價值感的低，就寄託於外界來證明，通過外界來索取。我希望得到愛，但是又不相信愛，結果就是：當有人愛我的時候，我感覺很好，但是不願意去開始這段關係，因為根本不相信這段關係能永遠。
只是，沒有嘗試就沒有永遠。誰能不能保證一段關係會白頭偕老。更何況，沒有開始戀愛，就想到了60年後會不會還在一起。沒有起步，就開始害怕結局。感情是件同樣需要經營的東西，而不是需要被別人來證明的東西。
他再愛你，你不經營，感情也會死掉。他不怎麼愛你，你懂得經營，感情就會慢慢升溫，然後永遠永遠。所以你要做的，並不是如何才能證明他會一直愛你。而是學會經營，如何讓他一直愛你。
前提就是，只有相信自己是值得的人，才有勇氣和力量去經營。因為他們會相信自己值得擁有一份持久且美好的感情。當你相信的時候，才會發生。
為什麼會覺得不值得，這與原生家庭有關。在一個缺乏安全感的環境裏長大，在一個一直缺乏認可和關注的環境裏長大，長大後依然缺乏，而且十分匱乏。匱乏到總是從外界要，卻不相信自己值得擁有，所以不可能要到。相應的，也就不可能擁有一段穩定的關係。
因為，一段美好的關係，必然是兩個人一起堅信，一起努力，相互支撐。關係是一個系統，系統需要平衡才能持久。關於那些太看得起自己的人，我有時候會覺得他們很挑剔，有時候則會覺得他們很悲哀。一個優秀的人，始終不能走入親密關係，不知道是怎樣一種心情。
因為優秀，所以眼光高要求高，因為優秀，所以不輕易放低自己去付出，因為優秀，所以認為別人理所當然的應該去追求他為他付出，因為優秀，所以常常曲高和寡。優秀，又何嘗不是他們的一種悲哀。
這種悲哀還常常在於，當他去審視一個異性的時候，常常發現的不是哪好，而是這不好那不好。只要你去發現，你總能發現兩個人不合適的地方，即使各方面都很優秀，卻發現是個“鳳凰男”，家庭太不好，然後認為這種家庭中成長出來的男人婚後會有暴力傾向、買房子壓力他大、不想跟他遠走他鄉等理由拒絕。
有時候發現條件與自己很般配的人，門當戶對，郎才女貌，卻又發現對方矯情，自私，不懂得尊重別人體諒別人，甚至高傲不懂謙虛。反正只要你去發現，你總能發現不合適的地方，於是你常常會感慨：好的那一半，都死光了嗎？到這個年紀，好人已經被瓜分完畢了。
於是你也會常常惆悵，孤獨。為什麼那些生活艱難，條件比自己差的人都結婚了，而自己叱吒江湖多年，卻依然孜然一身。身邊追求者也很多，但是自己卻始終不能接受。
太知道自己要的是個什麼人了，又何嘗不是一種並不知道自己要的是什麼。生活，並不是跟一大堆條件去生活；感情，也不是跟一堆優秀去戀愛。
自己挑來挑去是為了什麼，恐怕自己也忘了，只知道在挑啊挑。當問的時候，你會偶爾惆悵下，其實自己想要的人要具備哪些優秀，不過是以為這種人能給自己一種想要的幸福，要的是一種簡單，幸福的生活，不必太累。
可是這種生活，又該如何獲得，是不是找到一個理想的、靠譜的、優秀的人就有了呢？顯然這只是幫助你獲得想要的幸福的途徑之一，外在的條件只是輔助你獲得這種幸福的一小部分，更重要的則是你的內心，你想不想擁有這種幸福，及你值不值得擁有這樣的幸福。
那麼，既然要的是這種幸福，是不是不具備外在優秀條件的人就不可以給到呢？一直的漂泊，習慣的尋找，自己的奮鬥，常年的缺失或許已經讓你麻木和忘記了，自己想要的究竟是什麼。
有時候我會去想，為什麼你會用挑選來選擇對象，是不是正是因為不知道自己要的是什麼了，是不是封閉了自己的心，沒有辦法接收到溫暖，沒有辦法感受到安全，所以才會寄託於外在的條件去尋找，希望有些外在的條件可以給自己這種踏實的安全感。是不是想要的這些安全，這些溫暖，這些感動，只有能符合自己的標準了，才會覺得可能。
七仙女愛上董永，奮不顧身，織女愛上牛郎，不顧一切。有的人很好，你很想愛上他，但就是做不到。有的人沒那麼好，可你就是沒法不愛他。當感情真正發生的時候，才會發現，一直想要的東西，與條件無關，與優秀無關，只與自己的心有關。把心打開的時候，有一個人進來，你會發現自己心靈的缺失，很容易滿足。
挑剔，又何嘗不是一種價值感低。要通過優秀來證明自己，要寄託於優秀才能獲得愛。而真正獲得愛的管道，是自己，自己的心有沒有敞開。自己可不可以給到自己安全，自己可不可以給到自己愛。
當你敢於正視自己真正需求的時候，往往，你發現，感情是個很簡單的事情，無需刻意，無需篩選，無需防禦，一切都水到渠成的發生了。所有愛的發生，都建立在你準備好自己的基礎上。
有些人是因為太受傷，所以才會放棄了自己，封閉了自己，將感情弄成了一種任務，一種必須的選擇，卻將能愛的心鎖上了。因為過往，因為有過，因為痛過。所以不願意再去相信，不願意再去敞開，不願意再去付出。封閉，其實就是不再相信自己的愛了。故事，都曾有過，但是傷害，應該成為我們反思自己的原因而不是封閉自己的原因。
經過了那麼多的痛，我們還是長大了。經歷了那麼多委屈，那麼多無助，那麼多無奈，那麼多身不由己，我們還是長大了，而且還是活得很好。又有什麼傷害是我們不敢面對，又有什麼理由不讓我們去敞開自己呢？還是有人喜歡你，雖然單身與喜歡無關。但是你，完全可以準備好自己，來迎接一切可能的發生。
https://terence0425.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/還是有人喜歡你，為什麼依然單身/
2015年3月5日星期四
5 Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World
5 Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World
“I went to my neighbor’s house for something to eat yesterday.”
Think about this sentence. It’s pretty simple—English speakers would know precisely what it means. But what does it actually tell you—or, more to the point, what does it not tell you? It doesn’t specify facts like the subject’s gender or the neighbor’s, or what direction the speaker traveled, or the nature of the neighbors’ relationship, or whether the food was just a cookie or a complex curry. English doesn’t require speakers to give any of that information, but if the sentence were in French, say, the gender of every person involved would be specified.
The way that different languages convey information has fascinated linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists for decades. In the 1940s, a chemical engineer called Benjamin Lee Whorf published a wildly popular paper in the MIT Technology Review (pdf) that claimed the way languages express different concepts—like gender, time, and space—influenced the way its speakers thought about the world. For example, if a language didn’t have terms to denote specific times, speakers wouldn’t understand the concept of time flowing.
This argument was later discredited, as researchers concluded that it overstated language’s constraints on our minds. But researchers later found more nuanced ways that these habits of speech can affect our thinking. Linguist Roman Jakobson described this line of investigation thus: “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” In other words, the primary way language influences our minds is through what it forces us to think about—not what it prevents us from thinking about.
These five languages reveal how information can be expressed in extremely different ways, and how these habits of thinking can affect us.
A Language Where You’re Not the Center of the World
English speakers and others are highly egocentric when it comes to orienting themselves in the world. Objects and people exist to the left, right, in front, and to the back of you. You move forward and backward in relation to the direction you are facing. For an aboriginal tribe in north Queensland, Australia, called the Guugu Ymithirr, such a “me me me” approach to spatial information makes no sense. Instead, they use cardinal directions to express spatial information (pdf). So rather than “Can you move to my left?” they would say “Can you move to the west?”
Linguist Guy Deustcher says that Guugu Ymithirr speakers have a kind of “internal compass” that is imprinted from an extremely young age. In the same way that English-speaking infants learn to use different tenses when they speak, so do Guugu Ymithirr children learn to orient themselves along compass lines, not relative to themselves. In fact, says Deustcher, if a Guugu Ymithirr speaker wants to direct your attention to the direction behind him, he “points through himself, as if he were thin air and his own existence were irrelevant.” Whether that translates into less egocentric worldviews is a matter for further study and debate.
Other studies have shown that speakers of languages that use cardinal directions to express locations have fantastic spatial memory and navigation skills—perhaps because their experience of an event is so well-defined by the directions it took place in. But Deutscher is quick to point out that just because their language doesn’t define directions relative to the people communicating, it doesn’t mean they don’t understand the concept of something being behind them, for example.
A Language Where Time Flows East to West
Stanford linguist Lera Boroditsky and Berkeley’s Alice Gaby studied the language Kuuk Thaayorre, spoken by the Pormpuraaw people, also in Queensland, Australia. Like Guugu Ymithirr, it uses cardinal directions to express locations. But Boroditsky and Gaby found that in Kuuk Thaayorre, this also affected a speaker’s interpretation of of time.
In a series of experiments, the linguists had Kuuk Thaayorre speakers put a sequential series of cards in order—one which showed a man aging, another of a crocodile growing, and of a person eating a banana. The speakers were sat at tables during the experiment, once facing south, and another time facing north. Regardless of which direction they were facing, all speakers arranged the cards in order from east to west—the same direction the sun’s path takes through the sky as the day passes. By contrast, English speakers doing the same experiment always arranged the cards from left to right—the direction in which we read.
For the Kuuk Thaayorre speakers, the passage of time was intimately tied to the cardinal directions. “We never told anyone which direction they were facing,” wrote Boroditsky. “The Kuuk Thaayorre knew that already and spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time.”
A Language Where Colors Are Metaphors
Humans see the world within a certain spectrum of light, and, if you have fully functioning retinal cones, that light breaks down into various defined colors. According to some linguists, all individual languages have a set of specific color terms that partition the visible color spectrum. Devised by anthropologist Brent Berlin and linguist Paul Kay in 1969, the theory of “basic color terms” argued that all languages had at least terms for black, white, red, and warm or cold colors.
Not so in Yélî Dnye. In 2001, Steven Levinson, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, published a paper in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology on Rossel Island in Papua New Guinea, which appeared to refute Berlin and Kay’s theory. Rossel Islanders speak Yélî Dnye, which is quite dissimilar to other neighboring language groups. It has little specific color terminology—indeed, there is no word for “color.” Instead, speakers talk about color as part of a metaphorical phrase, with color terms derived from words for objects in the islander’s environment.
For example, to describe something as red, islanders say “mtyemtye,” which is derived from “mtye,” or “red parrot species.” Another example is “mgîdîmgîdî,” which can be used to say something is black, but is directly derived from the word for night, “mgîdî.” Not only that, writes Levinson, but the islander’s grammar reinforces this metaphorical slant, saying, “The skin of the man is white like the parrot,” rather than “He is white.”
He reports that in their art, islanders don’t tend to use unnatural dyes or shades, sticking to neutral tones and patterns as a means of decoration. This doesn’t mean Rossel Islanders have somehow evolved a different vision capacity from the rest of humanity, but it may have a profound effect on how they interpret their world; it certainly impacts how they describe it.
A Language That Makes You Provide Evidence
In Nuevo San Juan, Peru, the Matses people speak with what seems to be great care, making sure that every single piece of information they communicate is true as far as they know at the time of speaking. Each uttered sentence follows a different verb form depending on how you know the information you are imparting, and when you last knew it to be true.
For example, if you are asked, “How many apples do you have?” then a Matses speaker might answer, “I had four apples last time I checked my fruit basket.” Regardless of how sure the speaker is that they still have four apples, if they can’t see them, then they have no evidence what they are saying is true—for all they know, a thief could have stolen three of the apples, and the information would be incorrect.
The language has a huge array of specific terms for information such as facts that have been inferred in the recent and distant past, conjectures about different points in the past, and information that is being recounted as a memory. Linguist David Fleck, at Rice University, wrote his doctoral thesis on the grammar of Matses. He says that what distinguishes Matses from other languages that require speakers to give evidence for what they are saying is that Matses has one set of verb endings for the source of the knowledge and another, separate way of conveying how true, or valid the information is, and how certain they are about it. Interestingly, there is no way of denoting that a piece of information is hearsay, myth, or history. Instead, speakers impart this kind of information as a quote, or else as being information that was inferred within the recent past.
A Language That Has No Word for “Two”
In 2005, Daniel Everett of the University of Manchester published a study of the language of the Pirahã people, an indigenous tribe living in the Amazon, in the journal Current Anthropology. In it he detailed a language unlike any other. The Pirahã speak a language without numbers, color terms, perfect form, or basic quantity terms like “few” or “some”—supposed by some, like color, to be an universal aspect of human language. Instead of using words like “each” and “more” or numbered amounts to give information about quantity, Pirahã said whether something was big or small. There is a word that roughly translates as “many,” but really it means “to bring together.” The Pirahã also had no artistic tradition, and voiced no sense of deep memory.
Steven Pinker famously called Everett’s paper “a bomb thrown into the party.” Everett had found a language that directly contradicted Noam Chomsky’s widely accepted theory of universal grammar.
In a series of experiments (pdf) done by linguist Peter Gordon, Everett, and others, the Pirahã’s cognition has been tested over and again: Is number cognition possible without a numerical system? The answer appears to be “not really.” In one experiment by Everett, the Pirahã were shown rows of batteries, and asked to replicate the rows. They were able to recreate rows containing two or three batteries, but not anything above that. Instead of counting, the Pirahã used a system Everett called “analogue estimation strategy,” which worked well for them up to a certain point. It may be that the Pirahã have never actually needed to count in order to get by—Everett and others who have observed the Pirahã in the field certainly think this is the case.
Interestingly, the Pirahã don’t seem to have a very high opinion of outsiders. They are monolingual, preferring to stick with their own lexicon rather than borrow words from English or Spanish, and they call all other languages, “crooked head.” It is a sharp contrast to our society, based on globalized languages and all manner of communication translated into nothing but numbers—endless streams of 1s and 0s.
http://nautil.us/blog/5-languages-that-could-change-the-way-you-see-the-world
“I went to my neighbor’s house for something to eat yesterday.”
Think about this sentence. It’s pretty simple—English speakers would know precisely what it means. But what does it actually tell you—or, more to the point, what does it not tell you? It doesn’t specify facts like the subject’s gender or the neighbor’s, or what direction the speaker traveled, or the nature of the neighbors’ relationship, or whether the food was just a cookie or a complex curry. English doesn’t require speakers to give any of that information, but if the sentence were in French, say, the gender of every person involved would be specified.
The way that different languages convey information has fascinated linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists for decades. In the 1940s, a chemical engineer called Benjamin Lee Whorf published a wildly popular paper in the MIT Technology Review (pdf) that claimed the way languages express different concepts—like gender, time, and space—influenced the way its speakers thought about the world. For example, if a language didn’t have terms to denote specific times, speakers wouldn’t understand the concept of time flowing.
This argument was later discredited, as researchers concluded that it overstated language’s constraints on our minds. But researchers later found more nuanced ways that these habits of speech can affect our thinking. Linguist Roman Jakobson described this line of investigation thus: “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” In other words, the primary way language influences our minds is through what it forces us to think about—not what it prevents us from thinking about.
These five languages reveal how information can be expressed in extremely different ways, and how these habits of thinking can affect us.
A Language Where You’re Not the Center of the World
English speakers and others are highly egocentric when it comes to orienting themselves in the world. Objects and people exist to the left, right, in front, and to the back of you. You move forward and backward in relation to the direction you are facing. For an aboriginal tribe in north Queensland, Australia, called the Guugu Ymithirr, such a “me me me” approach to spatial information makes no sense. Instead, they use cardinal directions to express spatial information (pdf). So rather than “Can you move to my left?” they would say “Can you move to the west?”
Linguist Guy Deustcher says that Guugu Ymithirr speakers have a kind of “internal compass” that is imprinted from an extremely young age. In the same way that English-speaking infants learn to use different tenses when they speak, so do Guugu Ymithirr children learn to orient themselves along compass lines, not relative to themselves. In fact, says Deustcher, if a Guugu Ymithirr speaker wants to direct your attention to the direction behind him, he “points through himself, as if he were thin air and his own existence were irrelevant.” Whether that translates into less egocentric worldviews is a matter for further study and debate.
Other studies have shown that speakers of languages that use cardinal directions to express locations have fantastic spatial memory and navigation skills—perhaps because their experience of an event is so well-defined by the directions it took place in. But Deutscher is quick to point out that just because their language doesn’t define directions relative to the people communicating, it doesn’t mean they don’t understand the concept of something being behind them, for example.
A Language Where Time Flows East to West
Stanford linguist Lera Boroditsky and Berkeley’s Alice Gaby studied the language Kuuk Thaayorre, spoken by the Pormpuraaw people, also in Queensland, Australia. Like Guugu Ymithirr, it uses cardinal directions to express locations. But Boroditsky and Gaby found that in Kuuk Thaayorre, this also affected a speaker’s interpretation of of time.
In a series of experiments, the linguists had Kuuk Thaayorre speakers put a sequential series of cards in order—one which showed a man aging, another of a crocodile growing, and of a person eating a banana. The speakers were sat at tables during the experiment, once facing south, and another time facing north. Regardless of which direction they were facing, all speakers arranged the cards in order from east to west—the same direction the sun’s path takes through the sky as the day passes. By contrast, English speakers doing the same experiment always arranged the cards from left to right—the direction in which we read.
For the Kuuk Thaayorre speakers, the passage of time was intimately tied to the cardinal directions. “We never told anyone which direction they were facing,” wrote Boroditsky. “The Kuuk Thaayorre knew that already and spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time.”
A Language Where Colors Are Metaphors
Humans see the world within a certain spectrum of light, and, if you have fully functioning retinal cones, that light breaks down into various defined colors. According to some linguists, all individual languages have a set of specific color terms that partition the visible color spectrum. Devised by anthropologist Brent Berlin and linguist Paul Kay in 1969, the theory of “basic color terms” argued that all languages had at least terms for black, white, red, and warm or cold colors.
Not so in Yélî Dnye. In 2001, Steven Levinson, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, published a paper in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology on Rossel Island in Papua New Guinea, which appeared to refute Berlin and Kay’s theory. Rossel Islanders speak Yélî Dnye, which is quite dissimilar to other neighboring language groups. It has little specific color terminology—indeed, there is no word for “color.” Instead, speakers talk about color as part of a metaphorical phrase, with color terms derived from words for objects in the islander’s environment.
For example, to describe something as red, islanders say “mtyemtye,” which is derived from “mtye,” or “red parrot species.” Another example is “mgîdîmgîdî,” which can be used to say something is black, but is directly derived from the word for night, “mgîdî.” Not only that, writes Levinson, but the islander’s grammar reinforces this metaphorical slant, saying, “The skin of the man is white like the parrot,” rather than “He is white.”
He reports that in their art, islanders don’t tend to use unnatural dyes or shades, sticking to neutral tones and patterns as a means of decoration. This doesn’t mean Rossel Islanders have somehow evolved a different vision capacity from the rest of humanity, but it may have a profound effect on how they interpret their world; it certainly impacts how they describe it.
A Language That Makes You Provide Evidence
In Nuevo San Juan, Peru, the Matses people speak with what seems to be great care, making sure that every single piece of information they communicate is true as far as they know at the time of speaking. Each uttered sentence follows a different verb form depending on how you know the information you are imparting, and when you last knew it to be true.
For example, if you are asked, “How many apples do you have?” then a Matses speaker might answer, “I had four apples last time I checked my fruit basket.” Regardless of how sure the speaker is that they still have four apples, if they can’t see them, then they have no evidence what they are saying is true—for all they know, a thief could have stolen three of the apples, and the information would be incorrect.
The language has a huge array of specific terms for information such as facts that have been inferred in the recent and distant past, conjectures about different points in the past, and information that is being recounted as a memory. Linguist David Fleck, at Rice University, wrote his doctoral thesis on the grammar of Matses. He says that what distinguishes Matses from other languages that require speakers to give evidence for what they are saying is that Matses has one set of verb endings for the source of the knowledge and another, separate way of conveying how true, or valid the information is, and how certain they are about it. Interestingly, there is no way of denoting that a piece of information is hearsay, myth, or history. Instead, speakers impart this kind of information as a quote, or else as being information that was inferred within the recent past.
A Language That Has No Word for “Two”
In 2005, Daniel Everett of the University of Manchester published a study of the language of the Pirahã people, an indigenous tribe living in the Amazon, in the journal Current Anthropology. In it he detailed a language unlike any other. The Pirahã speak a language without numbers, color terms, perfect form, or basic quantity terms like “few” or “some”—supposed by some, like color, to be an universal aspect of human language. Instead of using words like “each” and “more” or numbered amounts to give information about quantity, Pirahã said whether something was big or small. There is a word that roughly translates as “many,” but really it means “to bring together.” The Pirahã also had no artistic tradition, and voiced no sense of deep memory.
Steven Pinker famously called Everett’s paper “a bomb thrown into the party.” Everett had found a language that directly contradicted Noam Chomsky’s widely accepted theory of universal grammar.
In a series of experiments (pdf) done by linguist Peter Gordon, Everett, and others, the Pirahã’s cognition has been tested over and again: Is number cognition possible without a numerical system? The answer appears to be “not really.” In one experiment by Everett, the Pirahã were shown rows of batteries, and asked to replicate the rows. They were able to recreate rows containing two or three batteries, but not anything above that. Instead of counting, the Pirahã used a system Everett called “analogue estimation strategy,” which worked well for them up to a certain point. It may be that the Pirahã have never actually needed to count in order to get by—Everett and others who have observed the Pirahã in the field certainly think this is the case.
Interestingly, the Pirahã don’t seem to have a very high opinion of outsiders. They are monolingual, preferring to stick with their own lexicon rather than borrow words from English or Spanish, and they call all other languages, “crooked head.” It is a sharp contrast to our society, based on globalized languages and all manner of communication translated into nothing but numbers—endless streams of 1s and 0s.
http://nautil.us/blog/5-languages-that-could-change-the-way-you-see-the-world
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