That last bit about his wife acting different in Paris interesting to me for a different reason. I’ve noticed that certain cities seem to affect my personality in different ways. For instance in NYC I feel I’m more assertive.
We can also wonder if something subtle was changed in translation, and I think it would be interesting if we could follow up by showing each of the experiment's subjects the two sets of questions side-by-side, and ask them whether they feel each pair is asking exactly the same question.
I have been reading John McWhorter's 'Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue' (strongly recommended), and only yesterday I read this passage:
"In German, one example [of the little complexities that creep into all languages] is a passel of little words that convey nuances of personal attitude. Using them is indispensable to sounding like an actual human being in the language - and mastering them is only possible via a year or more's exposure to the spoken language. Do you have your socks? is, in a vanilla sense, Hast du deine Socken? But you can also stick in the word auch - Hast du auch deine Socken? - in which case the sentence conveys "You have your socks, don't you?" In this usage, auch conveys a subtle, personal note of warning, impatience, correction..."
I am in no position to vouch for McWhorter's claim here, but his translation of the second version shows that this sort of nuance is present in idiomatic English.
I have just realized that this post is a sort of preemptive response to any suggestion that the outcome reported in the article is explicable only as an example of the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.