TIL: Today I Learned

[Traitorfish]

And it's a nice clean case of that thing some poster was asking for a few days back: the impact of languages on how we think.

It was when we were talking about so much science being done in English and whether that matters. Gotta track that back down.

OK: SS-18 ICBM over in Dumb and Stupid Quotes.

Is this is a question of language shaping perspective, or perspective shaping language? English has dozens if not hundreds of finely-gradiated colour terms, there's nothing built-in to the language which dictates we treat any given selection of these as more fundamental.

Consider that English didn't use to have words for "purple" and "orange", implying that English-speakers didn't used to see these as fundamental colourful-categories. Did the adoption of these words change how we thought? If so, why didn't "turquoise" or "crimson" become fundamental colour-categories? It seems more likely that our way of thinking about colour changed, and language followed suit.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Is this is a question of language shaping perspective, or perspective shaping language? English has dozens if not hundreds of finely-gradiated colour terms, there's nothing built-in to the language which dictates we treat any given selection of these as more fundamental.

Consider that English didn't use to have words for "purple" and "orange", implying that English-speakers didn't used to see these as fundamental colourful-categories. Did the adoption of these words change how we thought? If so, why didn't "turquoise" or "crimson" become fundamental colour-categories? It seems more likely that our way of thinking about colour changed, and language followed suit.

Well, I'm working from Saussure when I frame it up the way I do. One of his key premises is that we don't have a thing that we then give a name, but that we have a complex of names that allow a complex of things to emerge from what would otherwise be an undifferentiated phenomenal field. We see trees as trees, and not just part of an undifferentiated verdure, because we have the word tree to distinguish that bit of verdure from a bush or grass. (Not those words specifically, just three words that aren't the same as one another letting three things be not the same as one another, i.e. letting them emerge to our minds as things.)

So language and thinking are coeval.

In this view, any finer differentiations of what we've been able to see in the color spectrum (or you Brits in the colour spectrum) are partly a result of a finer set of verbal distinctions becoming available to us. In other words, I don't think this would be driven by "changes in our thinking about color." Or if that is true, those changes would be simultaneous with changes in a vocabulary for color. The blue-green article seems to me to make this point. Does any culture have less need to or interest in seeing those as distinct colors? And yet some don't bother to name them as so, so speakers of those languages actually don't see them as so.

 

[Takhisis]

Is this is a question of language shaping perspective, or perspective shaping language?

I recommend that you read up on Sapir-Whorf if you're interested in the subject.

 

[sophie]

TIL color is a cognate with: hell, hall, helmet, and cellar.

Makes sense given Grimm's law (i.e. k -> x [h]; same correspondence as casa-house, canis-hund, and centum-hundred), but definitely not one I ever thought about.

 

[Gori the Grey]

That is interesting, just b/c it puts words with such different meanings in contact with each other.

What about colour? Is that related to any words we would know?

 

[sophie]

That is interesting, just b/c it puts words with such different meanings in contact with each other.

What about colour? Is that related to any words we would know?

That's just a different orthographic rendering of the same word.

They all come from PIE *ḱel- (to hide/cover/conceal). As I said, part of Grimm's Law is that /k/ in PIE -> /x/ (h) in PGmc.

 

[Takhisis]

TIL there really are people whose surname is Planet.

 

[Zkribbler]

TIL there really are people whose surname is Planet.

I wonder if Moon Zappa will someday marry into that family.

 

[sophie]

I wonder if Moon Zappa will someday marry into that family.

Moon Zappa-Planet is legit the greatest name of all time.

OF ALL TIME

 

[Lemon Merchant]

U remember when her full name was Moon-Unit Zappa. Didn't she drop the "Unit" a few years ago? As in a legal name change?

 

[Takhisis]

And TIL another thing, that you can make awesome tracks and enhance them with random quotes from GTA: Vice City. Awwww yeah!

The proof:

(notice that the AF avatar is off so we're back on kitty business. But the thing about a person called Planet is actually real)

 

[Sommerswerd]

OF ALL TIME

I see what you did there

 

[Traitorfish]

Moon Zappa-Planet is legit the greatest name of all time.

OF ALL TIME

Isn't that the name of the superweapon from Force Awakens?

 

[Takhisis]

Nah, the name was star-annihilate-o-mat.

 

[Lexicus]

I see what you did there

Truly, Kanye showed the same qualities there which distinguished him in 2005 as a hero of the American people:

 

[Sommerswerd]

Nah, the name was star-annihilate-o-mat.

"O-Tron" not "o-mat"... sheesh Tak, get it right.

Truly, Kanye showed the same qualities there which distinguished him in 2005 as a hero of the American people:

The best part about that whole fiasco was Mike Meyers reaction.

 

[Lexicus]

The best part about that whole fiasco was Mike Meyers reaction.

I dunno, Chris Tucker's is pretty funny too

 

[Manfred Belheim]

TIL: The TIL thread clearly doesn't have a 100 page limit like all those other similar threads.

 

[Arakhor]

We don't serialise every thread and sometimes even those that we do are irregularly serialised.

 

[Cutlass]

TIL: The TIL thread clearly doesn't have a 100 page limit like all those other similar threads.

You should take a gander at the Daily Graphs and Charts thread.