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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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Ya know, the Eskimo language has about a zillion words for different types of snow. Snow is important to them, I guess. But in English, we have the word love. Now, just what the hell does that mean? I love ravioli. I love being with my friends. I love my partner. I love a good hot bath. The myriad of ways in which the word is used just confuses the hell out of me. I have a real problem with the word and I don't use it. We always say things like "I love them differently." or "I love them to a greater degree." to try to pinpoint the meaning of the word. That kind of stuff just confuses me all the more. Isn't love an important concept for English speakers? Why don't we have a zillion words to pinpoint exactly what we mean when we say we love someone or something? Could it be that we all find the word nebulous and use it just for that reason? Maybe we want to have some wiggle room or something. Do we have a linguist, philologist or etymologist who can explain this to me?
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13750
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I fear the Eskimo do not have more than 4 or 5 words for snow. It's an urban myth. But they do have a huge number of pronouns for place, single words meaning things like "that thing here", "the thing over there", "the thing inside", "the thing that cannot be see or heard" and so forth.
When you state you love something you are generally exaggerating for effect, a hyperbole. You use it as a strategem to show the substantial importance of the thing for you. So etymology is not what you need; rather you need a sense of usage.
"You" is used in its impersonal sense here, by the way.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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I can't remember now whether it is in the Alberta Provincial Museum in Edmonton or the Manitoba Provincial Museum in Winnepeg, probably the former, but there is a large display board with the various Eskimo words for snow and their English approximations.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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Try C S Lewis's 'The Four Loves'. It won't entirely answer your question, but it may help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Loves
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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I have the choice of believing Wikipedia or a provincial museum in Canada. The Canadian museum gives examples. The Wikepedia article takes a position and then argues to justify it, rather than arguing towards a conclusion. I as a layman have no specialist knowledge, although as a linguist I find the argument that a word alters in its oblique case to an entirely different word a bit desperate - are I/me, he/him, she/her, who/whom/whose etc different words? The simplistic answer is yes.
So here are two authorites with opposing views. Which do I believe?
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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"When you state you love something you are generally exaggerating for effect, a hyperbole."
And we use hyperbole not just for things, but for people too. For instance, "I love Whoopie Goldberg.", "I love my mother", "I love my wife." Certainly love does not mean the same thing in all these statements. For me, the verb love has been used so much as hyperbole, that it is almost devoid of meaning. Context helps, but still the word is all messed up. If someone says "I love you.", I can be reasonably sure that they feel affable towards me, but otherwise I remain unimpressed.
Likewise, if I say "I love you." to someone, I am very uncomfortable and very confused, because I have no idea of how the word will be perceived by the other person. Certain people, parents and spouses principally, miss it if you fail to say "I love you." occasionally. One comes off as socially maladjusted if an "I love you." is not answered in kind. Saying words that have no meaning seems like a waste of good air to me. But if I say "I would not be happy without you.", or "You add meaning to my life." or "I especially value our relationship because nobody else accepts and appreciates me as readily as you.", well then I am really communicating. I am saying something. "I love you." seems like a conversational formality to me, similar to "Great weather today". Maybe this seems silly to you, but it bothers me when people say "I love you." to me. To me it says "I would like you to say 'I love you.' to me now. I kinda want to say "Well, hell, why don't we really just say something meaningful instead?" Should I feel more comfortable using the word love?
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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Lewis defines Affection Friendship Eros and Charity. I think he simply condensed the 5 or so words that Greek has for love. So which do I use to tell my wife how I feel about her. "I feel extremely affectionate towards you.", "You are my best friend.", "I enjoy messing around with your body." or "I would do anything for you." Each of these expressions would be incomplete. In fact, all of them together would still be incomplete. I just looked at a dictionary. It gave 28 definitions for the word love. Obviously philologists don't have a clue what it means either.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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johnleeb
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Toe is in the water |
Location: USA
Registered: January 2009
Messages: 44
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Some of the words used on the Wikipedia are variations of ice rather than variations of snow. And even if it went through snow > water > ice it is not snow. And hail probably never was snow.
And then there are the sloppy pronunciations that change "That's no lady" into 'That snow lady'. I tend to think of such inane things just for comic relief.
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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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The thing is Eskimo (if there is even a single language called Eskimo) probably has no words for "snow" but multiple words that mention types of water that fall from the sky.
Snow is an English concept which has particular semantic boundaries and these boundaries are unlikely to line entirely with Eskimo semantic ideas.
Snow in English is a broad word that captures multiple sub-types. In Eskimo it may be that these things are considered different types of precipitation in the way rain, hail and snow are separate concepts in English (in some languages you might say that snow or hail are types of rain).
The most interesting thing in semantic divisions that I've seen is how different object placements are grouped between languages.
In English you say you put a ring ON a finger- in many languages you put a ring around a finger.
In English you open your legs and open your eyes- but in a language like Korean opening something with a hinge-like spread like legs would be described very differently to something like eyes that come apart.
So it's probably simultaneously inaccurate and accurate to say that Eskimo has multiple words that mean snow depending on what you mean by "means snow". But as the Wikipedia article shows English has a multitude of ways itself so it wouldn't surprise me if Eskimo has a lot, too.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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Love is intangible so I'm quite happy to only have an abstraction of the emotion. There are better ways to express love than words, anyway. Verbal communication is probably at its weakest when it comes to emotions. Some concepts are just too abstract to ever be fully captured by words. I don't think any of your examples of more meaningful ways of saying "I love you" is better than a passionate snog. Nor do I think they are necessary in most contexts. Prosodic features help a lot in determining context. But written communication in English fails to mark most forms of prosody so "I love Harry Potter" and "I love my boyfriend" do end up seeming quite similar. Listen to me say each of those sentences, though, and there's word of meaningful difference.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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I'd say that perhaps most emotive meaning in English is conveyed through prosody (that is: intonation, stress, loudness, pitch). Perhaps that is why comparatively we do have quite a limited emotional vocabulary. Hypothetically, other languages that make less use of prosody might actually have more developed vocabs when it comes to emotion. To me, though, I don't think the sound of emotion can ever be captured fully by words themselves.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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So, it's not what you say, but how you say it. Prosody. They speak often about the rising, falling, and dipping sounds in Chinese, but I don't think anyone has really ever studied how this stuff works in English. Anyway, it seems that love as a concept is impossible to articulate. Perhaps when we say "I love you.", we are saying that we really don't know how to express ourselves. And that brings me back to my original point. Why say it. Instead we should try to communicate. My mind wanders towards a lawyer, to whom exacting parlance is of paramount importance. I bet lawyers shy away from saying "I love you." They probably say something like "Whereas the party of the first part derives ample compensation from the attentions of the party of the second part, then be it resolved that the aforementioned first party binds himself by verbal emotional contract unto the second party also aforementioned in this brief." ::-)
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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ray2x
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 429
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Macky, it was said well by many previously. Language is a slippery concept. I studied linguistics at UCLA and have taught grammar many years. I guess besides an academic explanation, I can offer some support for your "love" interest. It's best to make "love" your own meaning, supported by a personal worldview of what "love" is or should be. You will notice many people will agree with you and disagree too. But have fun exploring "love".
Raymundo
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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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Well, Chinese has what is called lexical prosody- that is the very definition of a word changes based on the tone. Saying "mà" with a falling tone means scold, but saying "mǎ" with a dipping tone means horse.
English makes use of a prosody as a paralinguistic feature. And intonation features more at the sentence level than at the word level. The most obvious example is how most variants of English have a rising intonation at the end of a sentence. In a single word sentence you can make a difference between a statement "good" and "good?" by changing your intonation.
There are some examples of lexical prosody in English. Stress has a lexical purpose in English- take the word refuse. As a noun I stress the first syllable RE-fuse, as a verb I stress the second syllable re-FUSE; there's a clear cut meaning difference that uses stress.
Linguistics has moved a lot more towards applied linguistics and areas like discourse and pragmatics (the practical use of language) compared with its origins as primarily a grammatical field. But while English prosody has been studied in some depth, it is still a virgin field compared to things like English grammar and syntax.
Prosody is pretty important in clear communication, though. Which is why online or text-based communication often breaks down. Think of how prosody can be used to portray sarcasm, flirtation or just a statement. Even something as simple as "nice shoes" can have an array of meanings based on how one says it.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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I believe the Cantonese word for the common cold and syphillis is the same, but the meaning depends on the tone it is spoken in. My young Cantonese/Mandarin/English/German speaking friend refused to discuss the matter when I enquired.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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ray2x
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 429
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I like the discourse analysis of metaphorical uses of everyday speech. We construct worldviews very well and in instances we are guided by metaphorical usage. We pick careers, choose hobbies and associate with groups using metaphorical techniques. Speech abounds in metaphor: 'red hot love', 'cold shoulder', 'colorless green ideas'. We use metaphors as maps (mental maps or cognitive maps) to guide us through the myriad frames we encounter daily; "I love you", "I love chocolate". And importantly, we share our metaphorical worlds with others: "I love you, you love me." It's not the definitive account of language but I agree with its philosophy the most.
Raymundo
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