Here's Bryan W. Van Norden (Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy, p. 245) on one interesting possible example of the SWF (construed weakly as one's language influencing--not determining--one's thinking):
"There has been some interesting speculation about whether (as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis predicts) the structural differences between the Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan languages influenced the different development of philosophy in Europe and China.
One major difference is that all the Indo-European languages have forms of the verb “to be” (for example, einai in Greek or esse in Latin). This verb expresses existence (“there are mice in the basement”), predication (“the mice are happy”), identity (“Clark Kent is Superman”), membership in a group (“Clark Kent is a reporter”), and truth (“Is not!” “Is so!”). There is no one verb or grammatical construction that performs all of these roles in Classical Chinese. There are separate Classical Chinese expressions for “existence” (有/無, “to have”/“to not have”) and “truth” (然/不然, “is so”/“is not so”), while predication is handled by full verbs (樂/不樂, “is happy”/“is not happy”) and both identity and group membership by a particular grammatical construction (X Y 也/X 非 Y 也, X is (a) Y/X is not (a) Y).
The fact that Greek and Latin had the verb “to be” while Classical Chinese did not may have led to some of the characteristic differences between Chinese and Western philosophy. Plato is one of the fathers of Western philosophy, and one of his main concerns was the nature of Being. But there is no way to say “Being” in Classical Chinese. Consequently, certain metaphysical issues became central to Western philosophy in a way that they almost couldn’t have in Chinese philosophy."
To extend the speculation (with remarks I hopefully correctly remember from a prof in undergrad), it's been argued that Aristotle sorted out the distinction between properties and things, which Plato ran together (cf. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691010205/the-discovery-of-things). But there'd be nothing to sort out if his language had distinct copulas for the two! This example aside, I'd suggest that language doesn't influence ordinary thinking, at least not in any radical way, but can influence the course of both philosophy and literature, to the extent that the former is generated by linguistic confusion and the latter structurally influenced by grammar and syntax.
I loved this magnificent takedown of the SWH, which I agree with you is ignorant and condescending at the same time. Whenever someone claims that you can’t have a feeling unless your language contains a word for it, I think of one of their favorite examples--Schadenfreude--and laugh to myself. Not only do we English speakers have the feeling of Schadenfreude, but we have a word for it: Schadenfreude, which we’ve taken into our own language.
Incidentally, just the other day I was talking to a Swedish friend, and she told me she had “borrowed her book to another friend and needed to get it back.” Then she stopped, corrected herself, and explained that Swedish has a single verb for “to borrow” and “to lend,” and when she speaks English she needs to remember in which direction the item is being given so she will choose the correct verb. In other words, she thinks about borrowing and lending in exactly the same way that English speakers do, in spite of both actions being covered by a single verb in Swedish.
Here's Bryan W. Van Norden (Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy, p. 245) on one interesting possible example of the SWF (construed weakly as one's language influencing--not determining--one's thinking):
"There has been some interesting speculation about whether (as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis predicts) the structural differences between the Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan languages influenced the different development of philosophy in Europe and China.
One major difference is that all the Indo-European languages have forms of the verb “to be” (for example, einai in Greek or esse in Latin). This verb expresses existence (“there are mice in the basement”), predication (“the mice are happy”), identity (“Clark Kent is Superman”), membership in a group (“Clark Kent is a reporter”), and truth (“Is not!” “Is so!”). There is no one verb or grammatical construction that performs all of these roles in Classical Chinese. There are separate Classical Chinese expressions for “existence” (有/無, “to have”/“to not have”) and “truth” (然/不然, “is so”/“is not so”), while predication is handled by full verbs (樂/不樂, “is happy”/“is not happy”) and both identity and group membership by a particular grammatical construction (X Y 也/X 非 Y 也, X is (a) Y/X is not (a) Y).
The fact that Greek and Latin had the verb “to be” while Classical Chinese did not may have led to some of the characteristic differences between Chinese and Western philosophy. Plato is one of the fathers of Western philosophy, and one of his main concerns was the nature of Being. But there is no way to say “Being” in Classical Chinese. Consequently, certain metaphysical issues became central to Western philosophy in a way that they almost couldn’t have in Chinese philosophy."
To extend the speculation (with remarks I hopefully correctly remember from a prof in undergrad), it's been argued that Aristotle sorted out the distinction between properties and things, which Plato ran together (cf. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691010205/the-discovery-of-things). But there'd be nothing to sort out if his language had distinct copulas for the two! This example aside, I'd suggest that language doesn't influence ordinary thinking, at least not in any radical way, but can influence the course of both philosophy and literature, to the extent that the former is generated by linguistic confusion and the latter structurally influenced by grammar and syntax.
I loved this magnificent takedown of the SWH, which I agree with you is ignorant and condescending at the same time. Whenever someone claims that you can’t have a feeling unless your language contains a word for it, I think of one of their favorite examples--Schadenfreude--and laugh to myself. Not only do we English speakers have the feeling of Schadenfreude, but we have a word for it: Schadenfreude, which we’ve taken into our own language.
Incidentally, just the other day I was talking to a Swedish friend, and she told me she had “borrowed her book to another friend and needed to get it back.” Then she stopped, corrected herself, and explained that Swedish has a single verb for “to borrow” and “to lend,” and when she speaks English she needs to remember in which direction the item is being given so she will choose the correct verb. In other words, she thinks about borrowing and lending in exactly the same way that English speakers do, in spite of both actions being covered by a single verb in Swedish.