Does large vocabulary = nuanced perspective?
- Thread starter Jon
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Think about trying to describe a colour to someone. You might say something is grey. Which would be an adequate description.
But, you could be much more specific to convey the exact shade: dove, iron, battleship, steel, and so on.
So, yes - the wider your vocabulary, the more nuanced your communication - and I'd go along with the argument that those with a wide vocabulary will also perceive more meanings - though context dictates in most cases.
But, you could be much more specific to convey the exact shade: dove, iron, battleship, steel, and so on.
So, yes - the wider your vocabulary, the more nuanced your communication - and I'd go along with the argument that those with a wide vocabulary will also perceive more meanings - though context dictates in most cases.
There is a school of thought that relates the map to the territory. If you take the idea that having a more nuanced vocabulary lets you put more details on your word-map, at what point does the map become the territory? And at what point does the finely nuanced map become a picture? If words let you build a mental picture of something, more nuanced words will let you build a better picture.
As to your Eskimo question: Is it that they understand snow better, or that they see it so frequently that it is just a common factor in their language? I.e. is it that they understand it better or just have a LOT of it?
Consider bread-making. Bread is baked wheat paste with some amount of yeast in it, right? But then, we have the hoagie loaf, the pistolette, the bun, the bagel, the flour tortilla shell, the brioche, the French loaf, ... a myriad of names. Then there is pasta... boiled wheat paste that usually does not have much if any yeast in it. Pasta, right? But we have sphaghetti, linquini, rotini, vermicelli, ... So some of the names might be not only content but shape or context of appearance. Having 50 names for the same thing just reflects the variations seen by that culture.
It is not uncommon to have a myriad of names for things. If you know of the journal Maledicta then you might know that they have published lists of euphemisms for some naughty words. For instance, I recall that some years ago they published a list of over 110 ways to describe that someone had expelled gas from a nether region. I recall another article listing over 60 ways to describe male/female intercourse. Therefore, the 50 different words could include slang.
In a way, I sometimes think that a really rich vocabulary can be damaging. I once got gigged by a government reviewer who didn't care for a comment about how a particular situation went "from feast to famine" in terms of resource availibility. So I changed that to "from plethora to paucity" and the booger still didn't like it. I had to render by phrase, something like "resource availability levels exhibit a wide range of variation in the given period." Boy, talk about taking all the fun out of life when writing reports...
As to your Eskimo question: Is it that they understand snow better, or that they see it so frequently that it is just a common factor in their language? I.e. is it that they understand it better or just have a LOT of it?
Consider bread-making. Bread is baked wheat paste with some amount of yeast in it, right? But then, we have the hoagie loaf, the pistolette, the bun, the bagel, the flour tortilla shell, the brioche, the French loaf, ... a myriad of names. Then there is pasta... boiled wheat paste that usually does not have much if any yeast in it. Pasta, right? But we have sphaghetti, linquini, rotini, vermicelli, ... So some of the names might be not only content but shape or context of appearance. Having 50 names for the same thing just reflects the variations seen by that culture.
It is not uncommon to have a myriad of names for things. If you know of the journal Maledicta then you might know that they have published lists of euphemisms for some naughty words. For instance, I recall that some years ago they published a list of over 110 ways to describe that someone had expelled gas from a nether region. I recall another article listing over 60 ways to describe male/female intercourse. Therefore, the 50 different words could include slang.
In a way, I sometimes think that a really rich vocabulary can be damaging. I once got gigged by a government reviewer who didn't care for a comment about how a particular situation went "from feast to famine" in terms of resource availibility. So I changed that to "from plethora to paucity" and the booger still didn't like it. I had to render by phrase, something like "resource availability levels exhibit a wide range of variation in the given period." Boy, talk about taking all the fun out of life when writing reports...