After considering the definition of the language itself, we can get back to the hypothesis from Sapir. How far can we understand different interpretation of object and how exactly we communicate its definition with the entire world. It comes to the final outcome of the necessity of interpretation of communication and culture. So we must execute a reverse thinking about the definition of a culture, community, and the socio activities that human may use inside it. Take a case of the city that I belong to. A study community in Germany, that the people inside it use a same language, which is German. How a person can interact with the solid community that use a same language, and what sort of person could blend into this community. Some difficulties will eventually arise, due to background from different communities that is forced to be merged into one "bowl" that people call an education port. Different people from different cultures want to squeeze in this bowl, and expected to share a same vision, which is eventually to obtain a degree. Back to the definition of any community : A community is a variety of men and women (or animals) who interact alongside the same environment, and it exist everywhere in the nature. From visitors to penguins, monkeys to meerkats. Grouping is some simplicity as a way of describing community (Bacon, 2009, p. 4).
From the previous definitions, we can say that language is an important part of creating a culture and community. What if the language differ in a community, would the translation of the language will become problems, and would the several interpretation because the difference of language would build different interpretation and feels of an occasion that occurred? Rumana Quazi, from Media Culture and Mind class of RWTH-Aachen, mentioned that Sapirs hypothesis is to some extent correct. She said that it could probably correct for some cases only. She think that Sapirs hypothesis would be correct, but if it is implemented on the previous years when the hypothesis was created. It is not relevant if it's implemented now. I also consent to her opinion. Thomas L. Friedman wrote about his judgment around three different term of globalization, 1. 0, in which countries and governments were the primary protagonists, the globalization 2. 0, in which multinational companies led just how in driving global integration, and finally globalization 3. 0, the era of convergence (Friedman, 2005). If the necessity of communication between different cultural people is extremely hard as Sapir had said, which is in fact is easily enabled by the broadband data transfer communication, why the introduction of the entire world itself nowadays goes exponentially. Nowadays, due to introduction of Internet and pc, we can talk to people in several time, different language with an extremely small delays. We indeed can still deliver the message although the difference of the language itself. With technologies, we may also provide an online dictionaries that people may easily carry everyday. So if we've a difficulty in expressing our idea, we can use these online dictionaries. However, I also think that for some particular objects and occasion, we can not use the translation. For instance, Sharad, also from the Media Culture and Mind class, give a good example of the naming of a specific year that only exist in India. He thinks that he cannot translate it, so he has to provide a direct definition because of this without doing any translation of it.
Sharad feel that the difference of language will not give any problems to the communication as long as there's a bridge between these two languages. He mentioned an example of the most popular language on earth, which is English. When the speaker is fluent, they can still express particular things and also to share the same thoughts. This is the case of Sharad, who I believe also used English in his daily live in India. Nevertheless, this language bridge still give a huge hole for me, because I result from Indonesia. The Indonesian people only use Indonesian language everyday, and English (or even German) are just popular for many who have an effective education. So for me personally, the language bridge is not fully build, due to fluency level that differs between one country and another. So in my opinion, Sapir is not fully correct in observing this issue.
To this extent, we can say that indeed Sapir's hypothesis can only just be implemented in a few things. Now for the view of realities that construct the language. Just what exactly if the problem of variations in the language can be solved by utilizing a bridge language, like English. According to Sapir-Whorf, language can be an integral part of human, and language form a human's thought process (sloan. stanford. edu). I possibly could not fully trust this statement, because we have to realize that the way we think is not fully dependant on language, or vice-versa, but instead, it influence one another. Take a good example of different interpretation of language itself, and eventually how people interpret the meaning behind what. For example, the Germans have different meaning for "ein Freund von mir" and "mein Freund". If we translate this word by word to other language, such as English, both have the same meaning, which is "my pal". However, this is really different meaning. It is employed in several context, one for our couple, and the other is merely regular friend. In Indonesia, we use different verb to describe this problem. If we see also the context of culture itself, we would have different interpretation of sentences. For example, once I had developed an experience using different language (in this case German) to obtain a package in post office. After convinced that I have done all procedure, I took the package on the table. However, the girl which was in charge on me, suddenly said "nicht so schnell!" which means in English "not fast". This is for reasons uknown, I considered as rude because in my own culture, people dont say "not so fast" but instead "please wait for an instant". Different language make different interpretation and meaning. This is support Sapirs hypothesis, because just how that she speak, will not support just how I perceive due to difference in language. This question also asked by Anna Wierzbicka, who found out the relation between emotion and culture (Wierzbicka, 1992). Emotion is a spot that support by Sapirs hypothesis. Anna Wierzbicka also mentioned a good example from Australian Aborigin language, Gidjingali, that does not distinguish fear and shame. Obviouslly, in different cultures and different societies, people talk with various ways. If we observe these differences, we can take the value which is kept in the specific community, that has different social-values. However, of course that we now have some ways of expressing thoughts that is cross-cultural, and we can express exactly our feeling in other language. This is showing a flaw of Sapirs hypothesis.
According to Donald Davidson, the utility of referring to meanings of an expression e that people expressed by using e1 will make an ambiguous definition. To focus on the your brain as the representation of language, we have to think whether thoughts is relevance with language. Devitt and Sterelny think that thoughts is a kind of Inner representations (Devitt & Sterelny, 1999). If language is a kind of thought, how do we define the thoughts itself. Does that mean, that children who began to speak several words, or even a lot of people who've difficulties in articulating what does not have the same manner of perceiving reality? Does which means that that they do not have a standard way of expressing thoughts and also to express their inner self? I think that holds true. If we look back to the words of Devitt and Sterelny, that thoughts is a kind of inner representations, it creates a simple relationship between thoughts and perception. The reason for this is the fact just because a person having a problem in expressing the words, which means that the brain also having a difficulty to work optimally. In other word, just how these people perceive reality is not similar like the standard people. For instance, some people who's identified as having slow learning ability, that means that for specific stage, they could not understand the definitions of words and sentences, and also eventually, perceiving reality. Still according to Devitt and Sterelny, who use the term of :Mentalese", a person will translate Mentalese into English plus they understands English by doing the reverse. So Sapir must have considered the way the brain works. How the brain consider of how different language would effect this is of the entity (object or occasion). This judgment is also proved by Aubrey L. Gilbert, Terry Regier, Paul Kay, and Richard B. Ivry, who did an experiment and conclude that Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left. Another point that I wish to share about the language and the mind, according to Rumana Quazi, who contradict with the essential notion of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, think that language is just a little part of mean that drive our thoughts. In this case, she thinks that language may be accomplished by a process, and procedures. I trust her idea, especially after she gave an excellent example for an infant who still not learned to talk. Indeed, as enough time goes by, a children could figure out how to talk, plus they do a procedure for thinking to achieve the goal, which is talking. Again, this is a minor flaw of Saphirs hypothesis, a person could point out one at a time.
The relations between culture, language, and societies is very complicated, because these things bond one and another. So as conclusion, we can say that there is a solid connection between language, culture, and societies. These relations occurred in an extended period of time, and it occurred not only two ways, but multiple ways. Saphir theorem is not fully correct for todays societies, due to technologies and other languages that solve the communication problems, although we have to admit that for some specific objects and also for some specific occations Saphirs hypothesis still occurres.
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