Good article. I'll mostly nitpick, and add further info.
That 1.5 billion number is a red herring. It's mostly non-native speakers, using English as a lingua franca. However, the impact of your native language over your thinking is clearly bigger than the one of some lingua franca; as such these numbers here are more relevant.
And for most part you don't see stable communities shifting their language into a lingua franca. Most of the time they do it because their government explicitly or implicitly backs up another language - i.e. a "national language".
But Macron et al. won't mention that, right? Of course he won't; because once you acknowledge that national languages are the problem, specially when associated with a colonial past, then French is part of the problem alongside English. (Plus quite a few other languages.)
What if language is less like a yoke than like a wind, nudging us in various directions?
That's a great way to phrase it.
And, really, strong Sapir-Whorf (language dictates thought) is so blatantly false that it isn't even interesting any more. The moderate/"weak" hypothesis, more aligned with what Whorf himself said, is likely true - and we should be studying how and when it is true.
koavf in linguistics
How Much Does Our Language Shape Our Thinking?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/30/how-much-does-our-language-shape-our-thinkingGood article. I'll mostly nitpick, and add further info.
That 1.5 billion number is a red herring. It's mostly non-native speakers, using English as a lingua franca. However, the impact of your native language over your thinking is clearly bigger than the one of some lingua franca; as such these numbers here are more relevant.
And for most part you don't see stable communities shifting their language into a lingua franca. Most of the time they do it because their government explicitly or implicitly backs up another language - i.e. a "national language".
But Macron et al. won't mention that, right? Of course he won't; because once you acknowledge that national languages are the problem, specially when associated with a colonial past, then French is part of the problem alongside English. (Plus quite a few other languages.)
That's a great way to phrase it.
And, really, strong Sapir-Whorf (language dictates thought) is so blatantly false that it isn't even interesting any more. The moderate/"weak" hypothesis, more aligned with what Whorf himself said, is likely true - and we should be studying how and when it is true.