I could count on one maimed hand the number of times I've needed to say "teacher of my teacher". That a language wastes short possible-words on such things is not obviously a recommendation.
Teacher of my teacher might not be a good example to show usefulness. Boss of my boss is likely more useful. Even boss of the boss of my boss is a concept that's worthy of being expressed in big modern corporations.
But even a phrase like teacher of the teacher of my teacher can be useful when talking about martial arts lineages.
That a language wastes short possible-words on such things is not obviously a recommendation.
There's no waste. There only a limited number of possible one-sylable words. If I would give teacher a one sylable word I would spend one slot for it that I couldn't use otherwise. As it stands teacher is made up of two syllables cei and fwe which also get used elsewhere.
cei can for example be combined with the syllable for love to have a word for person I love. That automatically gives me also a word for person who loves me via the root that also makes up son/daughter. There also a relations root for bidirectional relations (all the basic categories of graph theory have a one syllable word). If you have a polyrelationship you get a word to describe a person who loves the same person as you do in 6-7 letters. In 8-9 letters you get "the person, that the person I love, loves".
There is a saying, don't know by whom: 'To love one's beloved is to love one's beloved's friends, and one's beloved's dog, and one's beloved's children, and one's beloved's wife, and one's beloved's beloved one.'
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.