looking for a linguistical/semiotic quote

Newsgroups	comp.lang.python
Date	2013-06-27 04:14 -0700
Message-ID	<d6546cc6-bc88-430a-9da0-a3189cc74c64@googlegroups.com> (permalink)
Subject	looking for a linguistical/semiotic quote
From	rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com>

Show all headers | View raw

I am looking for a quote 
(from Whorf/Sapir/Wittgenstein/Humboldt dunno... that 'school')

It goes something like this:

What characterizes a language is not what we can say in it but what we must -- like it or not -- say.


A demo of this is D Hofstadter's 
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html
which by inverting sexist/racist assumptions in English, makes for a hilarious read.

No I am not talking politics here, just want some references for a programming course in which I want to point out that

- C programmers need to talk memory-mgmt whether they want to or not
- Java programmers need to talk objects/classes likewise
etc

I believe I may have seen that quote here so asking...

Back to comp.lang.python | Previous | Next — Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

looking for a linguistical/semiotic quote rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-06-27 04:14 -0700
  Re: looking for a linguistical/semiotic quote Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-06-27 21:19 +1000
    Re: looking for a linguistical/semiotic quote rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-06-27 04:34 -0700
  Re: looking for a linguistical/semiotic quote Vlastimil Brom <vlastimil.brom@gmail.com> - 2013-06-27 14:10 +0200
    Re: looking for a linguistical/semiotic quote rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2013-06-27 05:25 -0700

csiph-web