I would like to follow up on a comment left on my last blog post, as I wanted to venture into a territory sort of like that, but it was too much to do in one post, I thought.
The comment concerned the fact that there are so many words to express different hues of the same primary color. For example, red. There is crimson, auburn, maroon, brick red, and burgundy. All describe different shades of red, but alter the red in either making it darker or lighter, with varying degrees of light and dark. It is astounding that there can be so many different names for the same idea. Why do we not just call everything the same? When we see the Minnesota Gophers' maroon, why can't we just call it red instead? I mean, the same idea is getting across, isn't it? Not entirely.
I am going to spit-ball many ideas with no real organization right now, so be prepared. I may or may not come back to organize it.
I think that one of the goals or objectives of language is to describe the world as we see it. Specificity in language means a more thorough and precise understanding of the world. I think that many people think that if we have a most precise vocabulary, that we will eventually or finally understand reality as it truly is. However, I would argue that there is no fundamental reality and that language is a testament to this fact. There is no common language, so there cannot be any common, objective Reality. Using the example of red, we see a fire truck and we see a Golden Gopher T-Shirt. When we see the first, we say that it is red (taking the stereotypical fire truck, of course) and when we see the t-shirt, we can say that it is also red. The red of the t-shirt, however, is not the same red as the fire truck, so we have to come up with a new way of expressing this new form of red. We could call it simply dark red and could move on with life. Then we would run into the following problem: we see the t-shirt and the truck but then a brick enters into our field of vision. We look at the brick and say that it is red. However, it is not the same red as the truck, as it appears to be a little bit darker than the truck. So we decide to call it dark red. By calling it dark red, we are then saying that it is the same red as that of the t-shirt, but we notice that this is not the case, as the hue of the shirt is darker than the hue of the brick. As the color of the brick is between that of the truck and the shirt, we could call the color medium red.
Ok. There we go, we have clarified this issue. But then a person enters the room. We notice that their hair is red, so we call it red. Upon further inspection, it turns out not to be actually red, as it seems to be a red darker than the red of the fire truck. So we agree that it is dark red. We look at this person some more and determine that it is not actually the dark red of the t-shirt, but is lighter in hue, so we call it medium red. We find that the hair is actually not the same color as the brick, as it seems to be darker than the medium red, but not as dark as the dark red. So what do we call it now? Medium-ish red? Medium-dark red? I suppose either of those names could work, but then when we have more objects in our mind, it becomes even further complicated because then we have to remember that medium red is like the brick, dark red is the shirt, red is the fire truck, and that this person's hair is medium-dark red. This seems, at least to me, to be quite confusing. This is part of the reason why we have so many different names for the different shades of red. We are trying to accurately convey how we see the world.
Sometimes (I would argue most of the time) these details are not important at all, as when we are told that something was crimson red, we do not make a very good distinction in our mind between crimson red and dark red or maroon or a shade close to crimson red. When someone says red or a color related to red, we think red regardless.
The same can go for video games, another example provided in a comment of the previous post. We have different names for different consoles so that we do not have to explain to a person that when we say "Pong" we do not mean the "Pong" of the 1970s, but rather the "Pong" of 2012, with the remote controls that are wireless, requiring nothing but a small sensor bar connected to the console and that is moved by your relation to the sensor (I tried to explain Wii here). So I think that having different words for distinct things is to provide precision and be efficient. As you can see, there was a lot of qualification to the second "Pong" that was necessary to distinguish it from its original. If we used the same word for both, then we would have to do a lot of talking, and humans are always trying to do more with less, right?
Language is beautiful for many reasons, but one of the most impressive things is that it can convey so much with so little. Each word has a very specific function and superfluous words are laid at the wayside. We no longer use Thee and Thou in common parlance, as we found a way to get around using these and instead just combined them into one word, "you."
I have always found Spanish to be a very efficient language, conveying many things in a single word. For example, the verb tenses of Spanish indicate (obviously) the meaning they are trying to get across, time (when the action occurred), person (I, You, He/She, etc.), number (singular or plural), and mood (something doubtful or unsure, or a command). Take, for example, the word "comÃ." By saying this we can find out so much about what the speaker or writer is trying to convey. We understand that it happened to the speaker, as it is in the "I" form, and so therefore this person was acting alone (number). We can understand that what the speaker was doing was eating (as this is the definition of the word). We can understand that there was no doubt about it, they were definitely participating in the act of eating. As well, we glean that it happened to them in the past. So, with one word, a Spanish speaker can say "I ate." This may not seem too bad, but note that the following does not happen as much in Spanish as it does in English: "I read" and "I read." The two are written exactly the same, but one indicates a time in the past while the other indicates the present. English would have to provide more context clues for a reader to fully understand and realize the original intention of the speaker whereas Spanish can do it with one word. Spanish words are powerful, providing a lot of information in four letters.
I think there was more, but my mind is tired. More later.
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