A very long but interesting post at EmptyBottle thinking all about languages (esp. Korean) and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Pinker, etc.

I actually subscribe to what he calls the "weak formulation" of the theory -- that language as the ultimate medium does have somewhat of an effect on us, coloring our perceptions of things in certain ways, but not determining or truly limiting them. Languages just tend to portray the world in a certain way, reinforcing cultural perspectives, and possibly creating a sort of local minimum which it might take a little extra effort to jump out of...

With regard to confucian concepts imbued in Korean and Japanese, it's interesting to note that Chinese also had many formalisms that were totally stripped away with the communist revolution. Currently some of them are coming back, but only since the beginning of China's economic boom... For instance, to ask one's name the phrase used to be "您贵姓?", or "Your honorable name?". As I've learned and heard it most of the time in China, people now usually say "你的名字是什么?", or simply "What is your name?"

Also, I should mention Lojban, which is a constructed language specifically created with the goal in mind to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The language is constructed unlike any natural language. It's similar to LISP in some ways, actually... ;) But during college I and my friend Paul became sort of infatuated with it and learned a lot of it, even attempting to have conversations in it constantly... hehe. I still remember quite a bit, and talk to my wife in it occasionally. (She knows a few phrases...) Anyone interested should read the historical background information on their site, and do a search on it, since there are a number of other sites about it not linked to from their main page. :)