202606170922 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis suggests that the structure of languages affects its speakers' worldview or cognition, meaning that people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language.¹

There are many possibly made up stories of indigenous tribes having or not having words for certain objects or concepts that we take for granted. Whether or not these stories are true, they illustrate the point that a group of people without the word for a car would not have cars in their worldview. This in turn may impact the decisions they make, the stories they tell, or the understanding they have of the world. A classic example is the far northern people having many words for snow. Certainly they would have a different worldview than equatorial people who had never seen snow.