"Suppose I say to you in English that “I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor.” You may well wonder whether my companion was male or female, but I have the right to tell you politely that it’s none of your business. But if we were speaking French or German, I wouldn’t have the privilege to equivocate in this way, because I would be obliged by the grammar of language to choose between voisin or voisine; Nachbar or Nachbarin."
“Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.”
- Roman Jakobson
Reading:
Does Your Language Shape the Way You Think?
By Guy Duetscher
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