2021.05.08 08:05
language without snow
In nineteen eighty-four, the author had an idea that there could be a language in which certain concepts couldn't be expressed at all, they would be inexpressible. But how to do it in practice? For example, how to create a language in which you can't say "snow"? That author had an idea to trim the language, to remove the words that denote things that are supposed to be inexpressible. But that won't work: if I don't have the word "snow" in the language, I can always say "you know, when it's very cold, frozen water falls from the sky instead of rain in the form of white flakes, you've probably seen it many times - and that's what I'm talking about." So no, we won't achieve this goal by trimming the language. We need a different approach: let there be the word "snow" in the language, let this word essentially mean snow, but let's introduce a rule that we basically don't talk about snow, but whenever we want to say "sand", we say snow". And we should insist that we mean snow, real snow, not sand.
Alice, I see you're coming back from the beach, how was it?
It was great, Bartek, there's such nice snow lying there, it was so nice to lie on it!
You mean that yellowish, warm, dry snow, otherwise known as sand, right?
- No, what are you talking about, there really was snow there, white, cold snow, like the one that falls from the sky instead of rain in winter. It was so nice to spread out on it with a blanket! The kids built castles out of it.
So try to say in such a language that you mean snow, but really snow, not sand.
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