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Newspeak's goal of a complete regularization of English, and the elimination of all redundant forms, is actually an interesting idea IMO. Business jargon often
by civilized 5y ago
Newspeak's goal of a complete regularization of English, and the elimination of all redundant forms, is actually an interesting idea IMO. Business jargon often moves in this direction, e.g. "learnings" instead of "lessons". And it's not always a horrible dystopian idea - Chinese has standardized over time and become more accessible to the masses with each iteration.
EDIT: I apologize for my doubleplusungood thoughtcrime. Oldspeak good! Newspeak bad! Oldspeak good! Newspeak bad!!!
- JKCalhoun 5y agoOrwell believed if language is pared down, so too are thoughts.
- civilized 5y agoWell I hope it's not a thoughtcrime to disagree with Orwell slightly, if he actually thought that this is universally true. Language often undergoes simplification and standardization and it isn't always bad.
- phkahler 5y agoYeet!!!
- boxed 5y agoMaking a language regular and less broken isn't the same as reducing it's cognitive power though. Think of it like this: if we made English even less regular would it make us better and freer thinkers? Of course not! It would probably make it harder to think clearly. A good example is how counting is hard to learn because the words are weirdband illogical. It's like converting between roman and Arabic numerals.
- hashkb 5y agoOr it'd give us way more options for clever poetry and songwriting. Which tends to make us better and freer thinkers. The weirder your language is, the weirder art you can make with it. The more the audience understands your nuances, the better the art, the more emotional the experience, the more happiness and empathy and connection (or fear and sadness and despair) you can project.
- antiterra 5y agoNo, you don’t need weird language for weird art, and there are amazing poems written in languages far less muddled than English. Much of art is about transcending limits, and often those limits are intentionally imposed. (See Oulipo)
- hashkb 5y agoI'm familiar with intentional constraints on art... I don't personally enjoy that but I'm not against it, the way I would be against simplifying the entire language or choosing to work in one solely for its regularity.
- themolecularman 5y agoSounds like he believed in The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis: > The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis /səˌpɪər ˈwɔːrf/, the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language. > Linguistic determinism is the concept that language and its structures limit and determine human knowledge or thought, as well as thought processes such as categorization, memory, and perception.
- godelski 5y agoThere's an experimental language called Toki Pona[0]. It is just composed of 14 phonemes and 137 root words. It is meant to be learned in a weekend essentially. But you can't easily express abstract concepts in it because of its limitations. Though it was created to have users concentrate on basic things. So there's at least ways to experimentally test this. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona
- asoneth 5y agoFrom what I've learned of toki pona so far it seems to be reasonably effective at conveying abstract concepts, poetry, haiku, and the like. It's the specifics and precision that seem hard to convey. For example, it's hard to talk about physics because the number system is deliberately anemic and power, force, and strength are all the same word. (wawa) If you wanted to be precise you'd have to build specific concepts using a lot of semantic primes and it ends up being even more wordy than xkcd's Up Goer Five: https://xkcd.com/1133/ https://xkcd.com/1133/
- lostlogin 5y ago> Chinese has standardized over time and become more accessible to the masses with each iteration. In the context of state oppression and control of language, using China as an example is very fitting.
- civilized 5y agoChina existed and simplified its language before the PRC believe it or not
- deepnotderp 5y agoLike under the Democratic Qin republic?
- civilized 5y agoHate how the oppressive Roman empire used state control to force its Latin alphabet on everybody.
- lostlogin 5y agoWhat have the Romans ever given us? Monty Python to the rescue. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ
- scoopertrooper 5y agoUnlike English, which was modernised under the reign of known-democrats Henry V and James I?
- mannerheim 5y ago> Chinese has standardized over time and become more accessible to the masses with each iteration. This is dubious. Taiwan achieved mass literacy using traditional characters. Further, the PRC itself is responsible for shutting down attempts to simplify the written language e.g. romanised newspapers that operated out of Shanghai until the communist takeover.
- mdp2021 5y ago> elimination of all redundant forms Does anything like that exist. Nuances are intellectual keys conceived for discrimination. Get proficiency over the language, and you will use 'learnings' when you mean learnings and 'lessons' when you mean lessons. It is having mental dominance over complexity. Simplification itself requires that dominance - it is thought management.
- robertlagrant 5y ago> Get proficiency over the language You'd ideally say proficient with the language, not over.
- mdp2021 5y agoThank you! I used "over" to suggest dominance. Surely you "do something better with something", but I wanted to express "the acquired capacity of "advanced doing" covering the subject" ("get advanced-doingness over").
- robertlagrant 5y agoI just sprang into existence to fulfil the internet's promise to correct someone who mentions correct language on the Internet. I shall now disappear.
- mdp2021 5y ago:) Ah, but I never said «correct language» [though in some cones of meaning - "well-tailored hence right" - I also mean that]: I said "out-of-awareness language". You need that to bend it, so you somehow need that to use it.
- kthejoker2 5y agoThe common English phrase for language dominance would be "command of" the language. You could also say "mastery over" the language.
- bitwize 5y agoOrwell himself supported the simplification of English for clarity -- reread "Politics and the English Language". What he opposed was people hiding their political agendas behind either obfuscatory language or thought terminating redefinitions of the language under the rubric of simplification and standardization.