[ExI] don't bother

[Dylan Distasio]

Language is an incredibly powerful element of a culture.   There is a
circular feedback loop of culture shaping language and language shaping
culture.  I believe it affects thought directly as it is difficult to think
about something when you don't have something in the language to verbalize
it.

On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 12:12 PM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 9:57 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> *> After 30 years of calling my Japanese friends amanojaku, I find out
>> Amanojaku is a demon-like beast in Japanese folklore, who devours a child
>> and dresses up in her skin in order to impersonate the child to fool her
>> grandparents into feeding it. All this time for all those years, my sushi
>> guy was saying “Greetings, horrifying demon.”  Why that sly bastard.  I
>> don’t think I will use the other Japanese terms and phrases he suggested I
>> say to attractive young Japanese-speaking women.*
>
>
> *Richard Feynman also tried to learn Japanese and this is what he had to
> say about it: *
>
> *"*
>
>
>
>
>
> *While in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much
> harder at it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis and do
> things. I took lessons from a Japanese man every day for an hour. One day
> he was teaching me the word for "see." "All right," he said. "You want to
> say, 'May I see your garden?' What do you  say?" I made up a sentence with
> the word that I had just learned. "No, no!" he said. "When you say to
> someone, 'Would you like to see my garden?  you use the first 'see.' But
> when you want to see someone else's garden, you must use  another 'see,'
> which is more polite."  "Would you like to glance at my lousy garden?" is
> essentially what you're saying  in the first case, but when you want to
> look at the other fella's garden, you have to say something like, "May I
> observe your gorgeous garden?" So there's two different words you have to
> use.  Then he gave me another one: "You go to a temple, and you want to
> look at the gardens. . ." I made up a sentence, this time with the polite
> "see." "No, no!" he said. "In the temple, the gardens are much more
> elegant. So you have to say something that would be equivalent to 'May I
> hang my eyes on your most  exquisite gardens?'  Three or four different
> words for one idea, because when I'm doing it, it's miserable; when you're
> doing it, it's elegant. I was learning Japanese mainly for technical
> things, so I decided to check if this same problem existed among the
> scientists. At the institute the next day, I said to the guys in the
> office, "How would I say in Japanese, 'I solve the Dirac Equation'?" They
> said such­and­so. "OK. Now I want to say, 'Would you solve the Dirac
> Equation?' ­­ how do I say  that?" "Well, you have to use a different word
> for 'solve,' " they say. "Why?" I protested. "When I solve it, I do the
> same damn thing as when you solve  it!" "Well, yes, but it's a different
> word ­­ it's more polite."  I gave up. I decided that wasn't the language
> for me, and stopped learning Japanese."*
>
> * John K Clark*
>
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