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> I have no desire to understand the experiences of the most part of the humanity anyway Nobody is arguing that a common language wouldn’t make mundane everyda
by zepto 5y ago
> I have no desire to understand the experiences of the most part of the humanity anyway
Nobody is arguing that a common language wouldn’t make mundane everyday transactions more convenient.
The argument is that a significant range of expression, nuance, culture and even experience would be lost in service of your goal of easier to use public transport, shopping etc.
It’s fine for you not to be interested in the experiences of the most part of humanity. Let’s just not pretend that there is a trade-off that many people do care about.
- azangru 5y agoI did mention both a mundane case (shopping) and a specialised case (web conferences and technical documentation). Which is to say, I am interested in the experiences of web developers, but not, for example, of naval officers or fashion models. A common language would give me access to a larger pool of web developer experiences, just as is would give anyone who is into fashion access to a wider range of experiences of similarly-minded people. The absence of a common language prevents that. > Let’s just not pretend that there is a trade-off There are several assumptions behind this position. One, that there are human experiences that require a very particular natural language to be expressed. That you need a whole unique system of phonology, morphology, syntax, etc. to be able to express your experience. I am not sure that this is the case. The other is that the co-existence of a multitude of languages allows us to capture and communicate human experiences better. Finally, as the life goes on, and the language — any language — evolves, we lose access to the previously expressed experiences anyway. So one language or many, we won't preserve human experiences.