The Sapir-Whorf conjecture

In class we discussed the Sapir-Whorf theory. Another word for this is 'language determinism', which means that our language determines the thoughts we think. In the book by Richard van de Lagemaat (pages 68-70) you see evidence that supports and refutes the hypothesis. Here is software programmer writing on the matter:

< Whorf were correct. I can look at code written in Objective-C, and see from the habits of the coders what programming languages they started with. LISP hacks use recursion, even when it's silly. COBOL coders can't seem to shake the "batch" processing mentality, and people who started with Visual Basic are hopeless.

I've always been amused by the "reverse Sapir-Whorf conjecture", which proposes that the Inuit settled above the artic circle *because* they had so many words in their language for "snow".But in all seriousness, I find the argument that language shapes thought to be quite convincing.>>

Do you agree or disagree with him? Do you have evidence that supports or refutes the hypothesis?

The nature of language is a topic that have always fascinated men. Ancient Greek philophers already questioned themselves about that. Plato even wrote one of his dialogue about this topic: in the dialogue, Socrates asked by two men, to tell them whether names are "conventional" or "natural", that is, whether language is a system of arbitrary signs or whether words have an intrinsic relation to the things they signify. Plato believed that the language is the instrument for which men can get closer to the knowledge of the things: "the creator of words uses letters containing certain sounds to express the essence of a word's subject". So, in his opinion, the reality determines the language. 

But what about the way we think? The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis claims that language determines the way we think. I think I disagree. Language is a conventional system of words that are created by men. So the way we think determines the language. In our textbook a book by the anthropologist Peter Farb, that discuss an experiment in which bilingual (Japanese- English speaking) women express different opinion when asked the same question in the two different languages, is quoted to support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. However, in my opinion, this can be used to disprove their theory. One of the example was: "Real friends should..." - "... help each other" (Japanese) / - "... be very frank" (English). But "...help each other" is just a translation so it can't really express what these women were thinking. If I apply the same experiment to myself, at the phrase "Real friends should..." I would say, in italian "...be frank", in english "...be loyal", but only because the italian word that translates "loyal" can be applied more to a dog than to a human being. What I mean to say is that "Real friends should... be by your side" and I can think the same in italian too. Language determines the way we express our opinion, not the way we think.