Re: does conlanging change your sense of reality?

2009/4/1 Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>:
> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
>> Den 31. mar. 2009 kl. 22.32 skreiv Mark J. Reed:
>>
>>> Why must there be a "point" to the variety of languages?  Can't things
>>> just be, without all having to fit into some master plan? The variety
>>> is interesting of itself.
>>
>> Variety is charming. It makes linguists busy. Maybe that's enough of a point
>> after all. But from a practical point of view it really would have been much
>> better if we all used the same language - unless the different
>> manifestations of language do have the ability to enrich our communication
>> and understanding in practical ways.
>
> And I think it does.   It's probably true that there's
> nothing you can express in one general-purpose
> language that you can't express in any other; but
> different languages seem to be optimized for
> talking about different things in different ways.
> What's easy to express in one language is harder
> to express in some others, etc.   The strict
> Whorfian idea that some ideas can only be
> expressed in certain languages is almost certainly
> false; but variety is still useful if it only makes
> certain things easier to express in some languages
> than in others.
Turing completeness, eh?

Reply