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One, Two, Many - Language Shapes Thought

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the all-natural-language-processing dept.

Chuck1318 writes "The Piraha tribe in the Amazon has only three words used in counting, that mean one, two, and many. A psychologist testing them has found that they are unable to accurately perform tasks involving quantities as few as four or five. He says that this shows that, at least for numbers, language shapes and limits how people can think." I can't help but be reminded of the gully dwarves from Dragonlance when reading this.

2 of 919 comments (clear)

  1. Troll by Hyler · · Score: 1, Redundant
    Or the trolls in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, who have the system
    • One
    • Two
    • Many
    • Lots!

    Or one, two, three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, many-many, many-many-one...
    --
    It's its. They're their, there. You're your. Who's whose? A looser loser, though those two too threw through the trough.
  2. Re: Sapir-Whorf by Black+Parrot · · Score: 1, Redundant


    > This idea has been around for a while, originally, insofar as I know, called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. It's neat to see it strongly confirmed in some capacity, though.

    Or do they lack the word because they never felt any need for it?

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade