"Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society."
- Edward Sapir, The Status of Linguistics as a Science (1929)
In the movie Arrival, there is a scene where the protagonist, a linguist trying to decode the writings of aliens, is confronted by her partner, who references the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. “Are you dreaming in their language?” he asks.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis postulates that the language a person speaks shapes the way they think and how they perceive the world. Language, in this sense, limits one’s ability to understand things.
But therein lies an opportunity. If language is limiting, learning new languages can unlock new ways of seeing and engaging with the world…
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