# Quote — Peter Farb, Word Play

> About 1932 one of Sapir's students at Yale, Benjamin Lee Whorf drew on Sapir's ideas and began an intensive study of the language of the Hopi Indians of Arizona. Whorf's brilliant analysis... seemed to support the view that man is a prisoner of his language. Whorf emphasized grammar—rather than vocabulary, which had previously intrigued scholars—as an indicator of the way a language can direct a speaker into certain habits of thought.

- Author: [Peter Farb](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-farb.md)
- Book: [Word Play](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-farb/word-play.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peter_Farb#Word_Play_(1974)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-farb/word-play/about-1932-one

## More from this book

> Each language encourages its speakers to tell certain things and to ignore other things.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-farb/word-play/each-language-encourages.md)

> Experiments... have shown that at least one aspect of human thought—memory—is strongly influenced by language.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-farb/word-play/experiments-have-shown.md)

> Wilhelm von Humboldt... stated that the structure of language expresses the inner life of its speakers: "Man lives with the world about him, principally, indeed exclusively, as language presents it."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-farb/word-play/wilhelm-von-humboldt.md)