In article <7fk8n57bqp.fsf at faith.csis.hku.hk>,
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~} <sdlee at faith.csis.hku.hk> wrote:
>>>>>> "John" == John Turnbull <john at turnbull.org> writes:
>All languages are present? No. There are some words in English that
>cannot be represented by simple words in Chinese, and vice versa.
>Simliarly, there are Cantonese slangs which cannot be expressed
>concisely in Mandarin. Don't you know that words of different
>languages divides (sort of...) the world in different ways?
And people think differently because of the languages they know. My
experience has been that knowing one language one can express oneself
fairly well. When I used three languages on a daily basis I would
sometimes need to switch languages mid-sentence to use a word in another
language.
> John> It seems there are a few possibilities when you think
> John> visually, either the verbal part of your mind is generating
> John> words while other parts of you mind are generating images,
>>Then, tell me in which language is the verbal part of my mind working.
I mentioned it as a possibility, and obviously I can't know how your
mind works.
>Mind you again that there are often concepts that cannot (yet) be
>expressed in words in any known languages.
I don't think so, and it's obviously pointless to ask for an example,
as by your definition you can't express it.
> >> BTW, how do you define "word"?
>> John> A unit of language that conveys meaning. That is just off
> John> the top of my head, and I'm certainly open to suggestions.
>>That's not what I use when I think, then. Neither do I use words for
>memorization. Memorization the shapes of a triangle, a circle, a
>cylinder, a cuboid, etc. do not require any words at all. You can
>memorize some shapes which you can't name, can't you?
Do you really need to memorize the shape of a triangle? Or is it just
a word in the language of geometry?
