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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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It can't have been much more than a decade ago. I'm failing to find it too, but I did find a 2005 paper where Everett still says "if I am correct that the Piraha˜ cannot count (something that will require much more experimentation to determine)".

He also recounts his wife attempting to teach counting to eager Piraha students over eight months of daily classes without success. If it turns out that their adults are so hopelessly innumerate but their children can learn then that's got to be one of the most amazing facts (whether about brain plasticity or Sapir-Whorf, either way) I've ever heard.

These days, we prefer the name "linguistic relativity hypothesis". Sapir-Whorf has some ugly ties to the Nazi's: they incorrectly used the theory as evidence for Aryan superiority (which is silly if you know German and some other language). Their usage was ridiculous but, like pedophiles, just the mention of their name taints the subject, hence the name change (and, of course, it more accurately states what the theory is about).

I should do a better job of keeping various articles that discuss the theory as it's kind of a pet favourite of mine. In my own life I've noticed Swiss-german native speakers tend to have a problem distinguishing smell and taste. They use the same word for both.

Sapir-Whorf has some ugly ties to the Nazi's

... and the plan is to ameliorate that with a damnatio memoriae on an ethnically Jewish scientist?

I'm not trying to shoot the messenger, thank you for the information ... but I do really hate it every time I see a bit of evidence for the conspiracy theory that modern anti-racism is hopelessly infiltrated by 4chan trolls.