▲ | remarkEon 3 days ago | ||||||||||||||||
Language is more than a tool, though. It's how we understand reality. My native language is English, I speak a little Spanish, more than a little German, and used to speak some other stuff (the use it or lose it kind). And in every effort to learn those language you, well, learn things about how to structure your thought and understanding of things. I think you're mistaking my point for something else. | |||||||||||||||||
▲ | ben_w 3 days ago | parent [-] | ||||||||||||||||
In learning German as an adult, one thing I keep noticing is how a single word in one language is several in the other. English: Times, German: Mal or Zeiten. "Every time" is "jedes Mal", but "good times" is "gute Zeiten". "Three times four" uses "mal". And every time a new thing gets invented, found, or imported, neologisms pop up, or words get borrowed from other cultures. In English, robins are said to have "red breasts", because the colour orange had not yet been coined when the bird needed a name, because the fruit after which the colour is named had not yet arrived. People also argue about if "vegetarian hamburgers" is a sensible term, as if the "ham" implies meat, even though (1) the meat varieties usually use beef, and (2) it's named after the place Hamburg. Before the development of hormonal and surgical solutions, the only thing trans people could do was change their clothes. At some point, the medical options are so capable that any given previous definition of gender becomes malleable. A womb implant is one such option. | |||||||||||||||||
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