[emerongi]

> The name "orangutan" (also written orang-utan, orang utan, orangutang, and ourang-outang) is derived from the Malay and Indonesian words orang meaning "person" and hutan meaning "forest",[10] thus "person of the forest".[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangutan

[dmos62]

That's a relievingly admirable way to look at these creatures. I find the English "it" an exceptionally tiring feature. There are so many prejudices and world views embded in our languages. We call ourselves hackers, but where's a hackaday.io or hackathons for human language, the ubiquitous communication medium?

[liftbigweights]

> That's a relievingly admirable way to look at these creatures.

What's "admirable" or not "admirable" about. It's just language. If you read about the way orangutans are treated in indonesia, I doubt you'd feel it was admirable.

> I find the English "it" an exceptionally tiring feature.

Then don't use it.

> We call ourselves hackers

Who is we? I haven't seen many hackers here. Just people with agendas, particular leftist social agendas.

> but where's a hackaday.io or hackathons for human language, the ubiquitous communication medium?

Are you saying english is the "human language"? Also, math is the closest thing to the ubiquitous communication medium.

Not sure what your complaining about. Orangutan is part of the english language as well. You don't have to use 'it'. And as for your "hacking the language", I don't care for your or anyone else Newspeak. Language is a tool and it should evolve as the need requires, not because people have a social agenda to push.

[atlantic]

With 6500 languages to choose from, I'm sure there are more than a few incorporating a world-view which aligns with yours. Rather than create something entirely new, wouldn't it be more reasonable to delve into what is already on offer?

[dmos62]

What is it about my post that summoned these mean, snickery comments? It's upsetting, but I'll respond anyway.

The idea is to actively influence how we communicate, not merely analyse it. Suppose I think Sanskrit had some good ideas. The question would be how to bring that use.

And it's not about my world-view, whatever you might think it is. I suppose you're implying that you don't have "world-view alignment" problems with the language you use. Do you think you're just lucky that way? The idea I'm putting forward is that the language in which you communicate (and think) actually shaped your world-view.

[atlantic]

> The idea I'm putting forward is that the language in which you communicate (and think) actually shaped your world-view.

That's not a particularly original view. It's called the linguistic relativity or Benjamin-Whorf hypothesis, and it has a very long history. But so what? It's not even a problem. It's simply a feature of thought that it is inherently interconnected with language.

What I don't understand at all is your proposed solution. While entire communities have strived over millenia to create linguistic tools to suit their particular needs, you propose to do the same, and better, by yourself, in a few months or years, by "hacking" (whatever that means).

No offence, but it just sounds slightly juvenile.

[ben_w]

Germans have a saying: Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache.

[josephv]

Upvoted for your excellent XKCD reference.

https://xkcd.com/927/

[yorwba]

What would one do at such an event? Maybe something like that already exists, just without "hack" in the name.

[mannykannot]

It is ubiquitous: jokes, puns, banter, poetry, the constant reinvention of slang...

[dmos62]

I think that we, as a civilization, don't really have the infrastructure (habit?) to talk about language i.e. look at it as technology, much less modify it. There's people creating artificial languages, which is really cool, but there's no obvious way to apply that in a mainstream way.

Then again, if someone were to start using English in a different way, it might catch on. He would just have to optimize his changes for acceptable backwards-compatibility. I guess the beauty about people as communicating devices is that they can adopt to changes in protocol, as opposed to some others (looking at you internet devices).

Edit: an artificial language is a bad term, there's no such thing, because it would imply that there's a natural language. It's just a new language, sometimes academic.

[always_good]

We easily treat language as a malleable device. Just look in literature or internet subcultures, but you can see it in day-to-day life if you think about it. You probably do it, too.

The idea and exercise of this is so ubiquitous that I think you're blind to it, like when people suggest there is no American culture.

[dmos62]

You missed my point. I elaborated in this comment [0]. I'd call the malleability you're talking about cosmetics in comparison. The examples I gave are human-centricity and sexism embedded in the very way we refer to objects.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18468142

[jerrre]

what usage of "it" are you referring to?

[akiselev]

Its use when referring to animals. Many languages have features of grammatical gender in general which has a specially humanizing effect on discussions about animals, even when their biological gender has nothing to do with it.

[dmos62]

I actually mean the even more general usage. The English vocabulary of objects is hierarchical: he, she, it are the major categories. Male and female humans fall under the first two. All other objects under "it". Not long ago even children were "it"s, I believe. Not certain about English, but certainly in some other languages.

That exerts a lot of ideology on communication, which has far-reaching effects. Simple examples:

- a human can only be talked about in the context of his gender; - humans are talked about differently than any other object. Human-centricity is just the most basic example of that.

You could come up with many examples, and that's just how we refer to objects without the context of their unique identifications. Then there's the whole nouns-verbs model of language, which has a far bigger effect on how we see the world and reason about it.

[liftbigweights]

> Male and female humans fall under the first two.

No. Male and female anything fall under the first two. For example, when we talk about our dog, we say "He's a good boy". People use he or she for animals too.

> Not long ago even children were "it"s, I believe.

We use it for 'gender neutral'. For example, when my sister was pregnant, everyone used 'it' to refer to the baby. "I can't wait for it to be born". "I wonder what it's gender will be". Once people discovered the gender, we used he or she.

> - a human can only be talked about in the context of his gender;

This is simply not true. Ask anyone with a dog or a cat.

It's so funny how people with agendas are. Languages with gendered everything like spanish is attacked for gendering everything. And languages with a sensible gender system is attacked for not gendering everything. Seems like there are too many useless people with too much time on their hands.

[dmos62]

I'm not sure what you meant by people having agendas.

Do you agree that the English language imposes an opinion about what's important and what kind of categories of objects there are in the world? That's what I'm saying. English is just an example. The principle of looking at human language as a tool is the same for all languages, so if it's your native tongue don't be offended.

To restate what I said, why are there these three top-most categories -- he, she, it? Is that ideal? How cognisant are we of the effects of this choice?

[AstralStorm]

At least we can agree on the point that gender is important for humans and other sexually reproducing organisms.

Whether the language used to describe this idea is important remains to be seen. Saphir-Worth's linguistic hypothesis has not been proven and is probably false as the afte many ways to have a reasonably complete map of the world in many languages.

[Balero]

Many languages also gender chairs. Does this humanize them?

[AstralStorm]

I'd be on the side of "no". It does not even animize them.

[beaconstudios]

there are invented language conventions and meetups. There's also the Esperanto community.

[gdfasfklshg4]

I already struggle to keep up with the politically correct term of the day. I don't want to offend anyone so I do do my best but our language is changing too fast to keep up.