Linguist AND cartographer AND plumber (and……whatever the technical term for the boiler guy is. And judging by how he handles that flying fish thing, he’s a pilot, too)
*Looking at James Spader* there is a perfectly good movie with a linguist main character right there
Aaaand now it’s over.
My brain is like 90% linguist and I noped out of the whole idea of “Arrival” upon finding out that it subscribed to a not just Strong but supernaturally overpowered version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
no linguist buys that shit
ok so the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis goes like:
reasonable interpretation: if you grew up without separate words for pink and red, you might just think of pink as light red, and you might not have strong emotional associations that are sharply different between those two colors
“strong” interpretation: if we make everyone speak Newspeak, they will be mentally incapable of ThoughtCrime
