4 ms·

Y'all are saying that because Americans don't have a single term for "long term happiness" and a separate term for "short term happiness," then that creates som

Y'all are saying that because Americans don't have a single term for "long term happiness" and a separate term for "short term happiness," then that creates some kind of blindspot for Americans. We understand how to put multiple terms together to express nuanced ideas. > In Chinese a word technically exists for love but it’s not used between people more for things but even then it’s not the same word. This is a perfect example of the characteristics of a language representing a change of perception on something as powerful as expressing love. This sounds like a cultural norm around language use. There's examples of this in English. You might say, "I love lamp." That's weird, it's a non-standard use for the word "love," but people would give you the benefit of the doubt and note that you "like" the lamp.

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Groxx 3y ago
Chinese is a particularly bad example since as a language it builds concepts out of multiple smaller terms far more explicitly than English.
Juliate 3y ago
> We understand how to put multiple terms together to express nuanced ideas. That's not the same as having a single word that embodies a specific concept, that helps/shorten the expression/sharing of it. If you don't have this single concept that stands for itself, and/or that you don't know the word, as long as you can't name it, it's hard if not impossible to see it. That's why we give a name to things or people we find/meet. See shades of white (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_white https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_white), plural forms, different depending on the language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural#Use_in_systems_of_grammatical_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural#Use_in_systems_of_gramm...), love (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love) if only in Greek where it has at least 6 very distinct ones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love). But, also, that knack for ambiguity and second and third order meaning in apparently detached sentences in some languages, it has its own charms.

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Groxx 3y ago

Chinese is a particularly bad example since as a language it builds concepts out of multiple smaller terms far more explicitly than English.

Juliate 3y ago

> We understand how to put multiple terms together to express nuanced ideas. That's not the same as having a single word that embodies a specific concept, that helps/shorten the expression/sharing of it. If you don't have this single concept that stands for itself, and/or that you don't know the word, as long as you can't name it, it's hard if not impossible to see it. That's why we give a name to things or people we find/meet. See shades of white (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_white https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_white), plural forms, different depending on the language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural#Use_in_systems_of_grammatical_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural#Use_in_systems_of_gramm...), love (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love) if only in Greek where it has at least 6 very distinct ones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love). But, also, that knack for ambiguity and second and third order meaning in apparently detached sentences in some languages, it has its own charms.