The Sapir-Whorfhypothesis (also called the hypothesis of linguistic relativity) states that the specific language we speak affects the way we think about reality. For example, light blue and dark blue would be perceived as variants of one color, while for Russian-speaking ones, which use a different word (голубой (goloeboj)) than for dark blue (синий (sini)), both as fundamentally different as red and pink for Dutchmen. The hypothesis derives its name from American linguists Edward Sapir and his disciple Benjamin Lee Whorf, but the idea was raised by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1820, which saw the language as the "soul of the nation." Roger Brown identified a strong and weak version:
The strong variant is generally rejected, also by Sapir and Whorf, but the weak version is still under investigation.
Whorf studied, among other things, the language of the Hopi. According to him, this tribe had a very own way of expressing times, and thus, their worldview was completely different from the Indo-European worldview; that the Hopi regarded time as something 'circulair', according to Whorf, had everything to do with their language. Although these findings have received the necessary criticism, his argument is that grammatical categories of a particular language can influence thinking and cultural practices are widely accepted.
Linguistic Relativity thus means that the way people think, perceive the world and classify phenomena are determined or influenced by their language system. Also see
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