10:03 Sep 5, 2011 

I attended a psycholinguistics seminar on the hypothesis held just five years after Guy Deutscher was born. The brilliance of the hypothesis is its power to generate thinking. One question posed in the seminar, is how it could be refuted. I answered that it couldn't be refuted scientifically by experiment (The degree course was on experimental psychology and Karl Popper was important methodology-wise), but you could refute it (or not) on a personal level by going to another country, learning the language and seeing if it changed the way you thought. The general verdict is that at a psychological level (strong hypotheis) it doesn't really work, while at the social and environmental level (consider: language determinies thought ergo translation is impossible) I think we run into instances of it everyday, mainly due to different laws and customs in different countries, which guide behaviour and therefore thought.

20:56 Sep 1, 2011 

It is just style. If it is to do with a bank, then the Italian author will very often add "bancario", just as if it is obviously to do with a bank, the English author will almost always omit it as taken for granted. Redundancy is different in the two languages.

20:42 Sep 1, 2011 

Why, for example, do they need to say "bancario" if they're a bank?

20:40 Sep 1, 2011 

Maybe the asker could confirm what kind of glossary this is - but the definition still looks odd to me.
Speaking of Sapir-Whorf, I really recommend this:
http://www.amazon.com/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Langu...
I found it absolutely riveting. The author thinks that Sapir-Whorf is mostly hokum.

20:32 Sep 1, 2011 

If you read my post between the lines, IMHO it is neither over long nor obtuse, this is probably the glossary attached to the financial statments of a bank, not a company, so the "attivo" by definition of the context, is that of the bank.
Do you know the Sapir Whorf hypothesis, language determines thought? What about the Davis Goddard hypothesis, context determines meaning? :)

19:31 Sep 1, 2011 

Is it just me, or is the Italian definition wrong? I would expect to see this phrase in a company financial report, meaning interest earned from banks.
PS Asker: Don't use "the same" - it's 19th-century legalese. Just say 'it".