Berg's question is simplistic. But as it happens, I have been thinking about a related idea for a while, and that is that we express tense--the grammatical construction of time--differently in different languages. I don't know a second language sufficiently well enough to analyze the same experience separately in each and note how they are expressed differently in regards to the sequencing of time. But I know that there is a difference. I also know that if I render a French phrase into English, it will sound stilted until I find an idiomatic form in English that closely approximates the French phrase. That, however, doesn't indicate that we "perceive a somewhat different world" but that we describe experiences differently in different languages. As I said in my earlier message, I firmly subscribe to a unitary experience, not segregated or disintegrated kinds of experiences.
And Chris, my memories of learning different disciplines--math, art, drawing, language, etc.--is not that the language of the discipline changed or gave me insights, just a more precise linguistic way to describe the experience of the discipline. The discipline itself, such as trying to master the calculus of infinitesimals or some biological or physical study, gave me the insights *and the language to represent them to myself*. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
