When it comes to pronouns English and also German has 'we' which can mean a lot of things.
Me+You
Me+Others (you not included)
Me+Others + Maybe you
Me+ Others and/or you (the default english you)
Me+You+Others
You can even further distinguish between how many others are included. Láadan has:
lazh = we: pronoun: 1st person: several: beloved
len = we: pronoun: 1st person: many: neutral
lezh = we: pronoun: 1st person, several, neutral
lin = we: pronoun, 1st person, many, honored
lhelezh = we: pronoun, 1st person, several, despised
lizh = we: pronoun, 1st person, several, honored
lhelen = we: pronoun, 1st person, many, despised
lan = we: pronoun: 1st person: many: beloved
I personally don't like the neutral/beloved/despised distinction but I think the several/many distinction could be useful and it's worth thinking about integrating it. Having those different shades of 'we' prevents confusion where the other person things you meant a different shade than they you did mean.
I think that a new language that provides a much better ability to express shades of meaning by being better at expressing many different things, can provide a real advantage over the existing language and that's then a reason for people to learn it.
I personally don't like the neutral/beloved/despised distinction
The feminist linguist who designed Láadan thought that "patriarchal" languages weren't sufficiently emotionally loaded. I'd like to see how she'd write a newspaper article using those pronouns.
I'm working on a conlang (constructed language) and would like some input from the Less Wrong community. One of the goals is to investigate the old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis regarding language affecting cognition. Does anyone here have any ideas regarding linguistic mechanisms that would encourage more rational thinking, apart from those that are present in the oft-discussed conlangs e-prime, loglan, and its offshoot lojban? Or perhaps mechanisms that are used in one of those conlangs, but might be buried too deeply for a person such as myself, who only has superficial knowledge about them, to have recognized? Any input is welcomed, from other conlangs to crazy ideas.