[IW] Strong Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

How would you represent, system-wise, a world where the stronger version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis holds true?

Thanks in advance!

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Molokh

Greetings, all!

How would you represent, system-wise, a world where the stronger version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis holds true?

Thanks in advance!

Link Language advantages to other advantages and disadvantages. Thus you'd have a Combat Reflexes language that gives you the Temporary Disad "Bloodlust", and makes it difficult or impossible to talk about any subject other than combat.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

I'd probably pick a bunch of traits (mostly mental advantages and disads, but possibly some skills) that I'd associate with local languages, and make sure that speakers of those languages tended very strongly to have those traits.

Mostly, though, I'd reread Vance's Languages of Pao.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

I'd probably pick a bunch of traits (mostly mental advantages and disads, but possibly some skills) that I'd associate with local languages, and make sure that speakers of those languages tended very strongly to have those traits.

Mostly, though, I'd reread Vance's Languages of Pao.

Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land is also based on Sapir-Whorf: learning Martian makes you enlightened, capable of working miracles, and really good in bed.

And Pratt and de Camp's The Compleat Enchanter is founded on an ultra version of S-W: by focusing your mind on the underlying axioms of a given mode of thought you can translate yourself into a world where those axioms are true. In other words, S-W gives you World Jumper.

Bill Stoddard

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land is also based on Sapir-Whorf: learning Martian makes you enlightened, capable of working miracles, and really good in bed.

And Pratt and de Camp's The Compleat Enchanter is founded on an ultra version of S-W: by focusing your mind on the underlying axioms of a given mode of thought you can translate yourself into a world where those axioms are true. In other words, S-W gives you World Jumper.

Bill Stoddard

That's not language granting Advantages. Tthat's just TL0+n^ with the superscience technology being Linguistics. :)

[SonofJohn]

Sapir-Whorf says Lexicon and cutural skills as mental culture are linked to each other if i understood its right. So to speak Inuit you would have to know arctic survival wich means by conter conclusion that you could learn arctic survival by learning Inuit, this would be mostly by getting familliar with the concepts of snow types, Inuit living conditions and arctic wildlife.

Its would not be complex to modell this in Gurps.

A weak form of true Saphir-Whorf could be modeled by making cutural familiarity and languages one advantage.

In a stronger version languages familiarity could include TL familiarity, if you speak a TL 10 languages you posses a TL 10 mind and understand TL10 tech.

If ethno racial stereotypes hold true in your campaign, a languages could even include these racial advantages and disadvantages ... learning irish would involve developing a tendency for violence and alcohol abuse as luck and high levels of brawling and carousing.

"1. Structural differences between language systems will, in general, be paralleled by nonlinguistic cognitive differences, of an unspecified sort, in the native speakers of the language.
2. The structure of anyone's native language strongly influences or fully determines the worldview he will acquire as he learns the language."

If you want Sapir Whorf by the Book your cultural conditioning and languages are so deeply ingraned in your neuro anathomy that you never really could overcome that.