“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.”
This actually first appears in Recent Experiments in Psychology (1950) by Leland Whitney Crafts, Théodore Christian Schneirla, and Elsa Elizabeth Robinson, where it is expressed:
: If we used a different vocabulary or if we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
Randy Allen Harris, in Rhetoric and Incommensurability (2005), p. 35, and an endnote on p. 138 indicates the misattribution seems to have originated in a misreading of quotes in Patterns Of Discovery: An Inquiry Into The Conceptual Foundations of Science (1958) by Norwood Russell Hanson, where an actual quotation of WIttgenstein on p. 184 is followed by one from the book on psychology.
Misattributed
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Ludwig Wittgenstein 228
Austrian-British philosopher 1889–1951Related quotes
“Men always say they didn't mean it that way. You would think they spoke a different language.”
Nynaeve al'Meara
(15 October 1994)
Source: Robert Browning's Poetry
Variant: To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.
Source: Unlimited Power (1986), p. 237
As quoted in Simply Living: The Spirit of the Indigenous People (1999) edited by Shirley A. Jones
The Status Of Linguistics As A Science (1929), p. 69 <!-- 1958 edition -->
Context: 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. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached … We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
“We shared a common tongue, but my language was a different language from theirs.”
Black Boy (1945)
Context: All my life I have done nothing but feel and cultivate my feelings; all their lives they had done nothing but strive for petty goals, the trivial material prizes of American life. We shared a common tongue, but my language was a different language from theirs.
Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni
Justin Huang (2018) cited in " Kuching to host AFHC conference in October https://www.theborneopost.com/2018/02/27/kuching-to-host-afhc-conference-in-october/" on Borneo Post Online, 27 February 2018