Le sequente message es le responsa a un question io ha ponite a sci.lang,
le gruppo de novas devotate al linguistica.

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Date: Sat, 4 Oct 1997 11:24:16 -0400
To: [log in to unmask] (STAN MULAIK)
From: [log in to unmask] (C R Culver)
Subject: Re: Sapir/Whorf Doctrine racist?

>>My intent is not to defend the doctrine, but simply to understand the
 reasoning.

    Well, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis could  be racist, but I don't think it is.
 The idea was that different language structures foster different wold-views.
 Ed Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf discovered this when working with Native
 American languages. However, neither Sapir or Whorf ever said that one people
 was better than another based on the world-view. Primitive peoples might have
 less complex world-views based on language, but language can grow. In any
 event, there are language more complex, and therefore with higher wrold-views,
 than English, such as Ancient Greek and Sumerian. So, Sapir and Whorf weren't
 saying that English is the highest of all languages, and the hypothesis isn't
 racist.
     The place where this hypothesis has genuine value is in translations.
 Sapir wasn't a big fan of translation, and he said that the different
 world-views make a perfect translation impossible. For those of us who have
 tried to study a language very different from English, such as Chinese or
 Japanese, you may know what I mean.

Christopher R. Culver <[log in to unmask]>
http://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html
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De Stan Mulaik