Australian stuff I’m so proud of Australia 15 Jun 2010 We’re best at car thefts. Beats those wussy Kiwis, who are only best at half shell mussels. [But, those who eat such things report, they are good.] The UK: CCTV. Germany, solar panels. France: Sugar beet[!] Guess what the US is best at… [Hat tip John Lynch, who is from… Read More
Humor Danger! Snark ascending! 30 May 200922 Jun 2018 Nicola McEldowney, who may or may not be related to a certain cartoonist, functions in a dialectic. Into the RSS reader she goes… Read More
History Bones of the founder of Christianity confirmed 29 Jun 2009 The bones are likely to be Paul’s, says the Pope. Who did you think I was talking about? Read More
Language is a tool? (If the words weren’t there, there wouldn’t be a right one that wasn’t being recollected.)
Check out this recent blog post from the same site http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/blog/?b=321 Awesome!
@enigMan, that language is a tool for manipulating interest systems, others’ and one’s own, is the idea that got me my PhD, back when
Long before I had even heard of a Worf (the Klingon one without the ‘h’) I remember reading that there was no direct English equivalent for the French word epanouissement and being struck by the possibility that it might be possible to talk and think about things in one language but not in another and wonder how that might affect a culture. Would it be true, as Chancellor Gorkon comments in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, that “You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.” Is there any support for at least the weak version of the hypothesis?
Personally, I think that any alien language which resembles the gutteral utterances of odd-toed ungulates will tend to make a culture a bit beastly. I call it the Worf-Tapir Hypothesis