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Lumifer 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: polymathwannabe 01 December 2015 04:34:22PM 1 point [-]

There's a very old and very silly debate in Spanish because some people refuse to acknowledge that "a glass of water" means what it intends to mean, instead of the ridiculously literal "a glass made of water", so they switch to the awkward "a glass with water", which in real life can mean a glass on a tray with a jar of water next to it.

So the result is that snobbish people insist on saying "a glass with water," and ordinary people plus meta-snobbish people keep saying "a glass of water", and both sides hate each other passionately.

Comment author: Lumifer 01 December 2015 04:58:43PM 1 point [-]

So is it, basically, a status signal by now?

Comment author: polymathwannabe 01 December 2015 06:03:04PM 1 point [-]

Yes, but in a complicated way. "A glass with water" is hypercorrection, which gives the speaker the opposite status from the one he believes he's displaying.