4 ms·
Additional to the comments you got - different languages are able to express different things. There's the classic example of Innuits having hundreds of synonym
by xyzelement 6y ago
Additional to the comments you got - different languages are able to express different things. There's the classic example of Innuits having hundreds of synonyms for snow: I bet you can have a much more nuanced conversation about snow in that language than any other.
Have you ever heard the phrase "lost in translation" and thought about what it actually means?
- ab111111111 6y agoIt's more a matter of "different languages force you to express different things". E.g. English forces you to specify subject and tense, while Chinese makes specifying such things optional.
- xyzelement 6y agoIt's not just that. Some languages are richer than others in various dimensions. For example: English has a single "diminutive"-type suffix but Russian has a vast range to express various related suffixes that allow you to color nouns in a way I can't really convey in English. This makes Russian more naturally suitable to (for example) poetry, but english for Technical writing