Inverse Sapir-Whorf and programming languages

逆萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说与编程语言

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, in its simplest form, is the idea that the language you speak influences the thoughts you think. This post is about a twist on this idea, that I’m calling “Inverse Sapir-Whorf” (for want of a better term), and how we see it in computer programming languages. 萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说（Sapir-Whorf hypothesis）最简单的形式是：你所说的语言会影响你的思维方式。本文将探讨这一观点的一个变体，我将其称为“逆萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说”（暂且这么称呼），并分析我们在计算机编程语言中是如何观察到这一现象的。

Sapir-Whorf is one of those ideas that has been popularised in general culture in a rather misrepresented and exaggerated form. In the field of linguistics, not many people today take seriously the “strong” forms of Sapir-Whorf, such as “linguistic determinism” – the idea that a language controls your thoughts or limits what you can think, or that you even need certain languages to think certain thoughts. 萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说在流行文化中常被误解和夸大。在语言学领域，如今已没多少人会认真对待该假说的“强形式”，即“语言决定论”——即认为语言控制了你的思想、限制了你的思考范围，或者认为你必须掌握某种特定语言才能产生某种特定的思想。

For example, just because a language might lack grammatical tenses, it doesn’t at all follow that the speakers will be more limited in how they think about time – there are always other ways you can express time. There is a fair amount of evidence that spoken languages can affect perception, skill and attitudes in certain areas, but it’s usually hard to demonstrate a large direct effect. 例如，仅仅因为某种语言缺乏语法时态，并不意味着该语言的使用者在思考时间时会受到更多限制——人们总能通过其他方式表达时间。虽然有相当多的证据表明口语可以在某些领域影响感知、技能和态度，但通常很难证明其存在巨大的直接影响。

Inverse Sapir-Whorf is a bit different. I haven’t been able to track down where I first came across the idea, but it goes like this: if classic Sapir-Whorf says your language limits what you can say or think, or makes it hard to say some things, inverse Sapir-Whorf says your language limits what you can’t say, or makes it hard not to say some things, or even hard not to think about some things. “逆萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说”则有所不同。我无法追溯最初是在哪里接触到这个概念的，但它的逻辑是这样的：如果经典的萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说认为语言限制了你能说什么或想什么，或者让你难以表达某些事物；那么逆萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说则认为，语言限制了你“不能”说什么，或者让你难以“不”说某些话，甚至难以“不”去思考某些事物。

Some examples might clear things up. Examples in natural language There are many examples to choose from, but they are not always obvious to native speakers of a language. I’ll pick just a few. 举几个例子或许能说明问题。自然语言中的例子有很多，但对于母语使用者来说，它们并不总是显而易见的。我仅挑选几个。

English: temporary or permanent present tense. What’s the difference between someone saying “I’m living in London” and “I live in London”? A non-native speaker may not pick this up at all, and a native speaker may pick it up only subconsciously, but “I’m living in London” reveals that the arrangement is temporary. 英语：临时与永久的现在时。说“I’m living in London”（我暂时住在伦敦）和“I live in London”（我住在伦敦）有什么区别？非母语者可能完全察觉不到，而母语者可能也只是下意识地感知到，但“I’m living in London”透露出这种居住安排是暂时的。

Now, this might not even be to do with the actual length of time you have been living there, because “temporary” is pretty relative. It might be more about how much you like London. You have to choose a tense, and because you typically do so subconsciously, the language is forcing you to reveal things – either the period of time you’ve been living somewhere, or how you feel about it. 这甚至可能与你实际居住的时长无关，因为“暂时”是相对的。它更多可能关乎你有多喜欢伦敦。你必须选择一种时态，而由于你通常是下意识地做出选择，语言实际上是在强迫你透露信息——要么是你居住的时长，要么是你对该地的感受。

English/Turkish/French: gendered pronouns and nouns. In English, in normal speech you are going to use “he” or “she” when referring to a specific person. “Singular they” does exist, but it’s very unnatural if you are talking about a specific person of known or assumed sex. 英语/土耳其语/法语：性别化的代词和名词。在英语的日常对话中，当你指代特定的人时，你会使用“he”（他）或“she”（她）。虽然“单数 they”确实存在，但如果你谈论的是一个已知或被假定性别的特定对象，使用“they”会显得非常不自然。

You can compare this to another language which doesn’t have gendered pronouns, such as Turkish, which just has “o” for he/she/it. The lack of gendered pronouns in Turkish doesn’t stop you from thinking or talking about a person’s sex, or produce a “less gendered society”, or anywhere close, so it would be difficult to find support for normal Sapir-Whorf here. 你可以将其与没有性别代词的语言进行对比，例如土耳其语，它只用“o”来指代他/她/它。土耳其语中缺乏性别代词，并不会阻止你思考或谈论一个人的性别，也不会产生一个“性别观念更淡薄的社会”，因此在这里很难找到支持经典萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说的证据。

But the inverse Sapir-Whorf is obvious – English pronouns push you to talk about it whether you want to or not. If you are trying to talk about someone you know, but do so anonymously, it can be very hard to avoid making their identification easier by revealing their sex with an inadvertent “him” or “her”. 但逆萨丕尔-沃尔夫假说在这里显而易见——英语代词强迫你无论是否愿意都要谈论性别。如果你试图谈论一个熟人但想保持匿名，由于不经意间说出的“him”或“her”暴露了对方的性别，这会让你很难避免对方被轻易识别出来。

Different again is French, in which nouns are gendered, which in some cases can force you to reveal information. If you translate “my friend” into French, you have to choose between “mon ami” (男性朋友) and “mon amie” (女性朋友), which are distinct, at least in written form, or “mon copain” vs “ma copine”. 法语则不同，法语中的名词有性别之分，这在某些情况下会强迫你透露信息。如果你将“my friend”翻译成法语，你必须在“mon ami”（男性朋友）和“mon amie”（女性朋友）之间做出选择，至少在书面形式上它们是截然不同的，或者在“mon copain”与“ma copine”之间选择。

Possessive pronouns are also interesting – they are gendered in both English and French (his/her, son/sa), but refer to the gender of the possessor and possessee respectively, and so reveal different information. 物主代词也很有趣——英语和法语中都有性别区分（his/her, son/sa），但它们分别指代的是所有者和被拥有者的性别，因此透露的信息也不同。

Turkish: “mış” tense. With some simplifications, Turkish has two main past tenses: there is the normal one that is similar to “simple past” in English, and then there is the “mış” form. This has various functions, but when describing a past event, this form is used when you have second hand or unreliable information. 土耳其语：“mış”时态。简单来说，土耳其语有两种主要的过去时：一种是类似于英语“一般过去时”的普通形式，另一种是“mış”形式。它有多种功能，但在描述过去事件时，当你掌握的是二手信息或不可靠信息时，就会使用这种形式。

If someone asks you “Did Fred come to work on Monday?”, then if you saw him you would use the normal past tense “geldi” (he came), but if you only heard that he came you would instead say “gelmiş” (he came, but second hand information). 如果有人问你“Fred周一上班了吗？”，如果你亲眼看见他了，你会使用普通过去时“geldi”（他来了）；但如果你只是听说他来了，你则会说“gelmiş”（他来了，但这是二手信息）。

The interesting thing to me as a non-native speaker was the effect of having these options, in contrast to English where you can just use simple past tense without any specific indication of reliability or where the information came from. 作为一个非母语者，令我感兴趣的是拥有这些选项所带来的影响，这与英语形成了鲜明对比——在英语中，你可以直接使用一般过去时，而无需明确指出信息的可靠性或来源。

In certain circumstances, Turkish forces you to include information about your level of certainty or whether you witnessed something – the simple past form is not neutral, because the existence of the “mış” form makes it an unnatural choice if it is not the most appropriate of the two. 在某些情况下，土耳其语强迫你包含关于确定性程度或是否亲眼目睹的信息——普通过去时并非中性，因为“mış”形式的存在使得在不合适的情况下使用普通过去时显得很不自然。

Interestingly, having learned to think that way, my wife and I have noticed an effect on our English. Often in Turkish the “mış” suffix would come at the end of the last word in a sentence, so now quite frequently we get to the end of an English sentence and notice that we haven’t put in any marker for “this-is-second-hand-info-I-didn’t-actually-witness-it”, and so we tack “mış” on the end. 有趣的是，在学会了这种思维方式后，我和妻子注意到它对我们的英语产生了影响。在土耳其语中，“mış”后缀通常出现在句子的最后一个词，所以现在我们经常在说完一句英语后，意识到自己没有加上“这是二手信息，我并未亲眼目睹”的标记，于是便会在句末补上一个“mış”。

Of course, you can easily express the same thing in English, using words like “apparently” and other means, but English doesn’t force you to specify, while Turkish pretty much does. 当然，你可以通过使用“apparently”（显然）等词汇或其他方式在英语中轻松表达同样的意思，但英语并不强迫你必须说明，而土耳其语则几乎是强制性的。

Comments: You often don’t notice these things until you learn another language, or attempt to teach your language to a foreigner. You kind of just understand them subconsciously. The vast majority of times you choose simple present over present continuous, for example, you won’t be consciously thinking about what that implies. 评论：你通常不会注意到这些，直到你学习了另一种语言，或者尝试向外国人教授你的母语。你只是下意识地理解了它们。例如，绝大多数时候你选择一般现在时而不是现在进行时，你并不会有意识地去思考这暗示了什么。