It's also worth mentioning that although English doesn't explicitly require you do do any of this, we generally have ways of conveying respect/familiarity (by tweaking the formality of our register).
Roman Jakobson (probably one of the most important linguists of the 20th century) has famously said: "Languages essentially differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they can convey".
I think this sums up the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis quite well. The strong version of the hypothesis claims that monolingual speakers of a certain language find it hard to think of concepts that cannot be expressed by their language. But as Roman Jakobson hints, with enough effort you can express most concepts in most languages. Quite frankly, I'm not aware of any evidence of this strong form of linguistic determinism, except for Daniel Everett's research of Pirahã[1], which is rather controversial.
The weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is more interesting, but most of the research I've seen was on pretty boring (in my opinion) subjects that seem to appeal to a modern European audience. In other words, it's mostly about color and grammatical gender (obviously only when that gender is Masculine, Feminine and Neuter, not something too foreign like Bantu noun classes).
The most interesting research I remember reading was on the Australian Aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr, which uses a cardinal direction system. Instead of using the relative direction "left" or "right" to describe the location of objects in relation to you, you'd have to use their compass-direction like "The tree that is westwards of me" instead of "the tree on my west". That pretty clearly forces every Guugu Yimithirr speaker to have to be constantly aware of the compass directions so they can clearly point at things, it's quite unsurprising that they are very good in instinctively knowing where the north is without a compass.
>That pretty clearly forces every Guugu Yimithirr speaker to have to be constantly aware of the compass directions so they can clearly point at things, it's quite unsurprising that they are very good in instinctively knowing where the north is without a compass.
Apparently you can't even greet someone unless you know the cardinal directions - an article I read in New Scientist claimed that a greeting is essentially telling which direction you came from and in which you are headed.
Be that as it may, I can easily believe that this feature of the language forces you to keep track of directions, after something I experienced: I was always good at keeping track of directions myself, I could walk around in sunless cities for hours and always know which direction I should go to get back to where I started. I could do this while driving too (I also traveled to other countries and drove around in many unfamiliar cities).
But then GPS navigation systems arrived. Convenient, I thought. Until I realized I had completely stopped tracking cardinal directions unconsciously. I haven't used car navigation since that hit me, and it was actually hard to get back into the habit of keeping track of where I am. I'm not sure I will ever again be as good as I used to be.
The problem is that it doesn't really train it - in a way it's the opposite. I've heard about someone using a belt which vibrated like that. After using it for a while they felt completely lost without it and lost all feeling of direction.
You actually need to let your brain do this for you, external input stops that. Though of course it would be nice with something like that, in general, if you could actually rely 100% on it.. which you can't, with GPS (in cities the direction may suddenly switch, for example, due to buildings playing havoc with the signal)
The strong version is disproven in the original paper: they mention concepts that cannot be expressed in English and then proceed to explain them. In English.
English grammar also has features for expressing uncertainty, unreality, hypothetical, wishes, demands with uncertain outcomes etc. by use of the subjunctive mood.
"If I were a bird, I would be able to fly." (were, not was)
"God bless you." (bless, not blesses)
"The teacher demands that students be on time." (be, not are)
Though many native speakers, even very intelligent ones, fail to properly use subjective mood at a high rate. Or otherwise do not recognize it. As some of the other comments note, there are some interesting differences around what a languages grammar will strictly enforce, where as in English, proper use of the subjunctive mood is less strict. Obviously, this is also far less expressiveness in English around this in grammar than there is in other languages.
This reminds me of a sketch by one of my favorite comedians, which roughly translates to this:
"May i thank you for this nice cup of coffee?"
"Go ahead"
"I want to thank you for this nice cup of coffee."
"Go ahead"
"Thank you for this nice cup of coffee."
"No thanks necessary"
"But i explicitly wanted to give you my thanks!"
"Sorry about that."
"Well thanks for nothing!"
"You're welcome"
"You've shown a complete lack of poor judgment. I have no confidence in your ability to screw things up. You are incompetent as a failure. You are at the very rock bottom of your future potential."
Levels of formality exist in most (if not all) natural languages, but the difference between what you've described above and a proper grammatical system is that the grammatical system is standardized, accurate and absolute. There are clear rules and clear formality levels involved.
Think about tense for instance. In English you have 3 basic grammatical tenses that can be combined with an aspect (perfect aspect, continuous aspect or both).
Mandarin Chinese has various aspect markers (like 了 le, 过 guo, 着 zhe or 在 zai), but does not have a grammatical marker for tense. That doesn't mean you cannot say that something will happen in the past or future: you just indicate the time with an adverb such as "tommorow", "yesterday" or "in the future".
The reason linguists say that Mandarin has no grammatical tense while English has grammatical tense is that the English tense is highly systematic. There are only 3 basic tenses (Past, Present and Future) and they are always marked the same way. On the other hand, Mandarin is flexible. You can mark the tense by using any temporal adverb you want, or even leave it out completely and let the speaker learn about it from the context. In English you don't get that level of flexibility: you HAVE to mark the tense, and you have only three ways of marking it (12 when you combine these ways with all the possible aspect combinations).
The same idea goes for thing like formality levels, honorifics or evidentiality.
English does have language registers, but there are many ways to express formality, and it's rarely clearly which of these ways is more formal. For instance, you can say:
"I would like to express my deepest gratitude for your invaluable assistance in this matter."
"I am sincerely grateful for the valuable time and effort you have so kindly dedicated to helping me."
"I am eternally in your debt for your gracious help in resolving the matter at hand."
Which one of them is more formal? I don't really know, and wouldn't want to spend a single moment debating about that.
However, in Korean it's pretty obvious that 합니다 (hamnida) is quite formal, but 하옵나이다 (haomnaida) is something so formal you'd usually only hear in historical dramas.
Japanese has less distinctions, but everybody can tell the difference between polite "desu", the polite formal "de gozaimasu", the formal (but not polite) "de aru", the informal and familiar "da" and then dated polite "de gozaru" (which you'd mostly hear in Samurai movies or other period dramas).
The situation in which you'd use each levels are also well-defined than in English. In particular, the familiar version is not neutral. You don't just use the Japanese "da" with people you don't know very well. It's not slang at all, but it's still quite rude to use it with strangers or your superiors.
And English has nothing quite like the distinction between "de aru", "de gozaimasu" and "desu". In most cases where you want to be polite (not formal) you would use "desu". "de gozaimasu" is used in certain settings that require extra formality (e.g. when talking to customers or in public announcements). "de aru" is something you would usually not use when addressing to people directly, since it is too plain (i.e. it would be quite rude). Instead, you find it in encyclopedias, reference books and documentaries.
I think this sums up the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis quite well. The strong version of the hypothesis claims that monolingual speakers of a certain language find it hard to think of concepts that cannot be expressed by their language. But as Roman Jakobson hints, with enough effort you can express most concepts in most languages. Quite frankly, I'm not aware of any evidence of this strong form of linguistic determinism, except for Daniel Everett's research of Pirahã[1], which is rather controversial.
The weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is more interesting, but most of the research I've seen was on pretty boring (in my opinion) subjects that seem to appeal to a modern European audience. In other words, it's mostly about color and grammatical gender (obviously only when that gender is Masculine, Feminine and Neuter, not something too foreign like Bantu noun classes).
The most interesting research I remember reading was on the Australian Aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr, which uses a cardinal direction system. Instead of using the relative direction "left" or "right" to describe the location of objects in relation to you, you'd have to use their compass-direction like "The tree that is westwards of me" instead of "the tree on my west". That pretty clearly forces every Guugu Yimithirr speaker to have to be constantly aware of the compass directions so they can clearly point at things, it's quite unsurprising that they are very good in instinctively knowing where the north is without a compass.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language#Pirah%C3%...