On Thursday, June 27, 2013 4:49:23 PM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote: > On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 9:14 PM, rusi wrote: > > > I am looking for a quote > > (from Whorf/Sapir/Wittgenstein/Humboldt dunno... that 'school') > > > > It goes something like this: > > > > What characterizes a language is not what we can say in it but what we must > > -- like it or not -- say. > > I think you may be looking for Larry Wall's statement in his State of > the Onion talk: > > http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/12/06/soto-11.html > > He's comparing human and programming languages and says pretty much > what you're saying. Of couse, he's probably not the first person to > have made that remark in some form or another... so you may still be > looking for someone else.
Thanks. Here's the quote: > Human languages therefore differ not so much in what you can say but in what > you must say. In English, you are forced to differentiate singular from > plural. In Japanese, you don't have to distinguish singular from plural, but > you do have to pick a specific level of politeness, taking into account not > only your degree of respect for the person you're talking to, but also your > degree of respect for the person or thing you're talking about. I am still not sure he is the originator of it If yes then he has my (single-valenced English) respect -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list