Here’s something that struck the little brain the other day when I explained
languages to a friend.
Indo-European languages and their inherent problem regarding natural order and
all the mayhem that ensues.
Let’s take the language tree as a visual example, this is a site somewhat related to graphics after all:
Indo European languages.
Let’s see if I can remember the original train of thought. Let us start by regard culture
as an expression of language and imagine them as little branches and leaves growing
of the tree.
A common theme that strikes every one of these languages is the desire to take over
the world when their language/culture starts blooming. For some reason they become
very warlike.
Every one of the cultures in this image has expressed this behaviour throughout history.
The latest one of course English in the form of America. England had their hayday awhile back
and American can be safely regarded as its own languge, as it is a culture on its own as well.
I could go on to list the whole thing but I’ll leave it up to you the reader to verify this.
History books are available from the library at least for a little while longer.
Now, where this becomes interesting is:
There are languages on this planet that do not have a separate word for He/She, but use the word IT.
The common factor in Indo-European languages is the built in separation of He/She, some stronger like french, others slightly more forgiving.
The direct result of this is of course separation of sexes, and all that follows. Feminism was an unknown concept for these other cultures and a rather silly idea when it came along. All that could be said was, “What took you so long”.
Now, we might just shrug this off as inconsequential, but if such a simple idea, that everyone isn’t equal, is hardcoded into the language, guess where the class system and all other forms of sociological mayhem stem from.
There’s lots of other cool things to find down this train of thought. But this was something to start things out.
There are other words as well that are builtin that don’t reflect the world in a correct way.