From owner-freebsd-chat Sun May 26 18:16: 7 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from wantadilla.lemis.com (wantadilla.lemis.com [192.109.197.80]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D009337B401 for ; Sun, 26 May 2002 18:16:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: by wantadilla.lemis.com (Postfix, from userid 1004) id 8956581337; Mon, 27 May 2002 10:45:58 +0930 (CST) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 10:45:58 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey To: Terry Lambert Cc: pgreen , Rahul Siddharthan , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Language in danger: Language loss Message-ID: <20020527104558.B43610@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <3CF17486.F06F3E6A@mindspring.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <3CF17486.F06F3E6A@mindspring.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.23i Organization: The FreeBSD Project Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ X-PGP-Fingerprint: 9A1B 8202 BCCE B846 F92F 09AC 22E6 F290 507A 4223 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sunday, 26 May 2002 at 16:49:26 -0700, Terry Lambert wrote: > pgreen wrote: >> On Sun, 26 May 2002, Terry Lambert wrote: >>> pgreen wrote: >>>> On Sun, 26 May 2002, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: >>>>> Totally OT for FreeBSD, but people who were reading the thread on >>>>> survival of small languages may be interested in this article: >>>>> http://www.spectator.co.uk/bookreview.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2002-05-25&id=997 >>>> >>>> Huh? >>> >>> Your ability to think about certain concepts is constrained by the >>> language(s) in which you are able to think. >> >> No, it isn't. > > Provide a counter example. Done. Of course, I can't communicate it to you, because to do that I would have to put it in language. Imagine you're driving down a crowded freeway and a car in front of you suddenly stops. You have to avoid it. How do you do it? "Well, if I veer to the left, I may hit the gravel on the side of the road, if I veer to the right, I may hit the central reservation, but there's not enough space between the lanes for me to get through, so maybe the gravel's the least risk"? Of course not. Putting thoughts into language is too slow for your own thoughts. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message