Date: Thu, 7 Dec 1995 00:33:23 -0800

From: Rima & Kim McKinzey rkm[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SLIP.NET

Subject: Re: linguistic thinking



There is

a constant danger, even for linguists, to get trapped in the Eurocentric

view of language as composed of atomic things called "words", and to think

other peoples and cultures less sophisticated because they don't have "a word"

for something. For one thing, they may have many words for aspects of a

phenomenon, and think English speakers less capable of precise thought because

we bumble along with a single gross category.



I've always thought that one of the joys of learning another language was

learning to think somewhat differently.



Rima