Language

For language we had lectures by three different teachers, who looked at different aspects of language in TOK: different languages and perception through language, how language is used to manipulate etc.

I feel that perception of the world through different languages is a really significant part of our lives (as students of an international school). Most of us are polyglots, and we have a feel for different registers, such as colloquial, academic etc. The school we are in is bilingual, and by speaking both English and French, we all have a feel for different cultures as well. I think understanding a language helps get an insight into the culture relating to the language, because there are expressions and notions in different languages which translation destroys. For example French is a very flowery expressive language compared to languages such as German, English, Spanish, because it was originally the language of the diplomats. This is really true (statement from experience), because a sentence in English could take twice as long in French.

There was also a really interesting example that links language and perception.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b71rT9fU-I
This tribe has a different system for naming colors, which in fact allows them to distinguish colors that we can't easily. I also experience this when I talk Japanese and English: for example the word 悔しい(kuyashii) in Japanese describes an emotion between frustration and regret, which I don't know how to describe in English, and I actually feel most people that don't speak Japanese don't feel this exact emotion. It links to the quote, "If you can't say it, you don't know it".