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These seem like extreme cases that just take more words to translate due to limited overlap of shared experiences. If it never snows in Hawaii, the Hawaiian lan
by unishark 6y ago
These seem like extreme cases that just take more words to translate due to limited overlap of shared experiences. If it never snows in Hawaii, the Hawaiian language may not have a word for it. But snow is a real thing apart from language. I think what is meant by informal language is more the structural rules, which ultimately seem to just be arbitrary patterns of behavior people fell into, instead of sometime deeper.
- jschwartzi 6y agoIt actually does snow in Hawaii. People on the big island have skis and snowboards for the few times it snows on top of their mountains. It also snows on Haleakala in Maui which is pretty fun to think about.
- wcarey 6y agoThose rules too exhibit cross-language conceptual shear. For example, English doesn't really have an equivalent of Latin's subjunctive mood, and our clause boundary system is way weaker. We use punctuation marks in a way that the Romans didn't (they used punctuation words in a much more systematic way than we do). Greek has a separate grammatical number for pairs of things as opposed to our singular and plural. Those rules, in addition to the individual words (perhaps) bespeak a different way of conceptualizing the world.