It’s referring to a future intentionality occurring in the Past that had yet to come to directly to fruition, if you see what I mean

Okay, I see it now. So it’s kind of like describing multiple realities: it’s one reality that was at one point a very possible one, but which, due to later events, is no longer possible in this strand of the universe. (If you want a very deep and philosophical explanation, that is!).

Being multilingual really does open up a whole world, if not universe, of concepts that the monolingual cannot grasp, does it not?

Actually, this is something I’ve never considered before, but I don’t know any pure monolinguals! At least, none that I can think of offhand. Everyone I know seems to have some knowledge of at least one language other than their own (although some may not know it well enough to speak or even understand comfortably).

I suppose that, in a country with so many languages spoken so close to each other, one cannot help but encounter tongues other than ones own.

Of course, that doesn’t mean everybody speaks multiple languages fluently, but they do have access to the world of “concepts that the monolingual cannot grasp” as you put it. For example, regarding the experiment you described:

I noticed, whilst taking part in the experiment, that there were certain nonsense ‘words’ that reminded me of words I knew from other languages than English. […] Their response … as monolingual people … was that there were no foreign words used, only English or non-words — as monolinguals, they couldn’t even conceive of the phenomenon I was describing to them because ‘language’ per se was not something they experienced themselves.

I’m pretty sure that everybody I know will be able to immediately grasp the idea, and understand how the nonsense-words appeared like real ones to you.

But then again,

I wouldn’t have guessed you weren’t a native English speaker, no : D

Well, in terms of speaking, you could say that English is my ‘native’ language, insofar as it’s the only one I’m fluently literate in. And English is also the only language I can speak fluently and comfortable; my ‘real’ native languages have unfortunately not been given as much attention as they probably deserve :P

That also means I haven’t experienced the multilingual situations you describe, in which

four or more languages would be spoken by four or more people but without a 100% overlap — i.e. everyone would share two or three languages with everyone else but not the same two or three with all of them.

As you say, the British and U.S. cultural imperialism is certainly having its impact!

Yet there also appear to be universal truths that have no linguistic correlate in any language. The Meaning Of Liff (by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd) captures that very concept rather nicely …

I haven’t read The Meaning of Liff, but I have read some extracts from it. Yes, there are a lot of meanings out there just waiting for words to come and be attached to them!

Similarly, I suppose you’d also have words and phrases that take on a special meaning amongst your friends or family? The terms that refer to some previous incident or discussion, which later become part of the vocabulary you use while interacting with those people?

Do words like these prove that people can, indeed, have thoughts independent of language? My first thought was “yes”, because we’re forming the concepts first and creating words to match them later. But then, it’s just the words that need to be created: the concepts are still expressible using language, it’s just that one needs to use more words or sentences to describe them. So it’s quite possible that language is still shaping your thoughts in the first place.

So, dreaming in multiple languages was a thing for me too: I remember one dream I awoke from and spent the day puzzling about because I could remember it perfectly except for a conversation held with some people at a tram stop I spent time at during the dream … only to realise “Of course! Those girls were speaking Spanish!”

Yes, I’ve got multiple-language dreams as well. There have been some times when people speak some language in a dream, and I understand what they say much better than I actually understand the language in real life.

And I’ve also had dreams where a particular word features; perhaps a new word that describes something, or the name of a place or person, or even a key word that’s important to remember. The only trouble is, when I wake up, I remember everything of the conversations, often down to the exact words, except what that special word was. My mind just blanks out on that bit. Which is annoying.

Even today … decades after I first learned it, the first word that springs to mind when I want to describe the phenomenon is the German word Ansporn … incentive in English.

This happens mainly to words like doi (Deshi for curd) which were important to me when I was young (and when English had not yet taken over). We still use many such Deshi and Tamil words in my family, even when we’re speaking to each other in English (which is most of the time).

When I’m speaking in languages other than English, though, the English word rarely comes to mind even if I don’t know how to say the word in whatever language I’m speaking.

And then there are the concepts that only make sense in both languages — that is, they wouldn’t make sense in either language on its own … only when the two interfere with each other to create an idea you couldn’t conceive of if you didn’t speak both.

I don’t remember experiencing this, but I can well imagine it happening!

So maybe, you’re right .. but, equally, maybe you are subject to an extra level of linguistic interference precisely because language plays that much more of a role in your everyday life and that cannot be ruled out as a factor because your brain looks for words where there aren’t any, as it were ; )

That’s also true. Maybe it’s the language that creates the concept in the first place, but then what I’m conscious of is the concept and not the word(s) behind it — so then my brain has to, roughly speaking, search for the word again in order to use it.

if you don’t have a word to describe a phenomenon can you conceive of it? Is the sky blue? Does it even exist? Or is it simply a void above your head that has no start or end and cannot, therefore, be described at all?

I suppose one cannot have the concepts ‘sky’ and ‘blue’ without words to describe them. But we can certainly perceive the great expanse of whiteness up there, and wonder what other object has similar colours.

Of course, ‘colours’ is also possibly a learned concept. What about the great expanse up there? If we don’t have the necessary language and cultural background, will we even react to the sky? Is it possible that, even if we chance to look up and see the sky with our eyes, we will never actually think about it?

I’ve read a few science-fiction stories of people who live on planets where the sky is inactive: nothing ever happens up there, and so nobody ever thinks of looking up — even when a spaceship from another planet comes to land. They look all around for the source of the noise, but not once does it occur to them to glance upwards!

(Science-fiction stories are not necessarily representative of reality, of course, but in my opinion the good ones at least get pretty close).

Individual differences will reign but I find it hard to imagine that five items are not easily identified at a glance.

Ahh, that’s true, but it’s not the identification that I’m speaking of. I may be wrong, too, of course, but my understanding is that, though the people may recognise sets of objects they won’t actually ‘count’ in the sense of comparing them to the abstract concept of ‘numbers’.

One sheep is more important to him … because it’s his sheep … than a hundred cows belonging to someone else — because they aren’t sheep. So, sheep are important, not numbers.

So in this case, it’s the sheep he’s counting. Possibly he knows them as individuals, and compares them to a tally in his head. As you say, it’s each of his sheep that are important.

I think there’s also a certain element of people having the wrong idea about numbers anyway — they treat them like entities rather than properties of entities

Hmm. Now that you mention it, perhaps that shepherd is also counting, just not with words. After all, the “tally in his head” is nothing but a tool for counting objects.

In that case, maybe it’s modern mathematics that turns numbers into entities one can manipulate. And when people used to that concept see numbers being used as properties instead, they don’t consider it as counting.

Now I’ve gotten a bit confused about what my original point was. I think my theory was something like this: that people can automatically perceive a sense of “two-ness” or “three-nees” with just a glance at a set of objects, but when it comes to larger numbers, their brains aren’t equipped to recognise those sets without first building an internal tally.

I’m not too sure about five, but from personal experience it does seem that I have to make an effort to count for larger numbers. Of course, there’s always the possibility that
(a) I count for smaller numbers like three as well, but so quickly that I don’t notice, and 
(b) because I only started paying attention to these things after reading about the concept, my perceptions are coloured by me preconceptions.

I’ll, have to take a look at Bellos’ book for the original research — I’m prepared to be wrong, but … at this stage at least … a little sceptical.

You know what: keep the scepticism for now ;-)

Basically, it comes down to rods and cones and what they respond to. Then there’s the matter of encoding of experience, which is the same irrespective of the phenomenon in question (Long Term Potentiation results in an association between the concept of ‘red’ and the triggering of certain cones).

I was also reading somewhere about ‘metamers’, that is, the way we interpret a certain combination of colours, and how that can differ from person to person. That’s a physical difference, I think, dependent on the way different peoples’ cones detect certain wavelengths of light and how highly they react to it.

But yes, once the phenomenon’s there, there’s also the cultural question of how one describes it. If I didn’t know the word ‘violet’, I would probably substitute it with ‘pink’.

It’s interesting that Hopi doesn’t have a word for ‘green’. But perhaps, if I didn’t know the word ‘green’, then I too would insert the word ‘orange’ instead….

That is, so to speak, would it be a case of we both see red but I prefer blue … or would you call my red green if you could see it through my eyes? Would we both feel rough but you enjoy it or would I feel your rough and call it smooth in my own terms?

There is also that difference, yes.

But perhaps that can be split into two parts, a ‘feeling’ that is the same for everybody (depending of course on other factors like how sensitive that person’s skin is, but qualitatively the same, at any rate), and an emotion that comes attached with that feeling, that can differ from person to person?

Just a thought I got two seconds after reading this — so, I’m sure somebody else has already had this discussion before?