Schleiermacher and Deutscher (Jordan)

 I was excited to read You Are What You Speak because the topic is absolutely fascinating to me, and it's something I've pondered myself. I didn't realize there was such a large discourse around the idea of language shaping your thoughts and experiences already. I found Roman Jakobson's maxim interesting. While it may be true that for the most part, languages don't differ much in terms of what they can express, the idea that all languages share exactly what ideas they can express is one I don't believe. Maybe his point is that this is not where the core difference between languages lies. Reading about how language can affect the way we think makes me curious as to specific ways people think differently across cultures, and what the implications would be. Speaking of gendered objects, I have a friend from Austria who would sometimes refer to objects as "he" or "she". I now want to ask them if even when speaking English they maintain this idea of objects having genders. I never thought that ego-centric coordinates were a language-based thing. It has always seemed simpler to me to use left or right because it doesn't require you to know the orientation of where you are, only your own orientation.