Language and Psychology

[El_Machinae]

I'm sorry, I misspoke. A typical person can easily (short-term) remember the number of items they can pronounce in 1.5 seconds. So if you populate a list of items with words that are multiple-syllable, a person should be able to remember fewer of the words.

 

[Fifty]

It has some pretty important effects. If nothing else, our phonological voice is a huge component of our reasoning process. Heck, languages which have 'quick' sounding numbers have an easier time remembering number-strings. (e.g., "five" is one syllable, "seven" is two: languages with more syllables in their numbers have a harder time remembering phone numbers)

Interesting! I was mainly referring to the nonsense peddled by Whorf-Sapir, specifically such fantastically absurd statements as:

"In Hopi, an American Indian language of Arizona, the word for 'dog', pohko, includes pet animal or domestic animal of any kind. Thus 'pet eagle' in Hopi is literally 'eagle-dog'; and having thus fixed the context a Hopi might refer to the same eagle as so-and-so's pohko." -Benjamin Whorf