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ChristianKl comments on Linguistic mechanisms for less wrong cognition - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: KevinGrant 29 November 2015 02:40AM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 29 November 2015 06:47:24PM *  1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 29 November 2015 07:40:35PM 4 points [-]

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.