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You can make anything shallow by just not thinking about it. Conversely, the way things become deep is because we intellectualize them.
by j2kun 2mo ago
You can make anything shallow by just not thinking about it.
Conversely, the way things become deep is because we intellectualize them.
- deaton 2mo agoSure but while studying the etymology of words can do a lot to help you understand them (particularly from a linguistic perspective), its really more important to consider what people mean when they use a word, not where it came from. "Howdy" comes from "How do you do?" and yet nobody treats "Howdy" as a question. If I say "Howdy" to you (which is something I do often), and you answer "Good, how are you," I'm going to give you a weird look.
- baronvonsp 2mo agoActually, funnily enough. I grew up in Texas and customarily say "howdy" as a greeting, and I grew up using it just as you say. I found it confusing for a while that coworkers who weren't native English speakers, particularly those I hadn't met in person, would reply to my Slack "howdy" with something like "oh, I'm good, thanks for asking". It was very jarring, like I said "hello" and they said "banana"; took me longer than it should have to figure out they were parsing the full "how do you do" since I'd never encountered that growing up. It became a pretty common experience at work.
- buildingsramen 2mo agoSure, sure; an unexamined life is not worth living, yadda yadda I just take issue with this type of analysis for trying to generate that depth - as an etymological lesson, it's minimally interesting, but as far as it tries to "say something" about Japanese culture, it can't.