[pba]

This article (post?) is the 2019 version of chain mail. Weak insights, no academic substantiation. I had to stop reading at the 'words for emotions' part.. 'sonder' and the rest are not dictionary words; they were made up by some guy. Yet this ridiculousness continues its way around the internet..

[twtw]

I wonder what world you live in (career, culture, etc) that makes you feel that a post with title "coolest things I learned in 2018" should come with "academic substantiation."

Also, the whole point of the words for emotions thing is sorta that those are new (i.e. not pre-existing, which maybe means not "real" to you). The point is to think about what feelings we don't have words for, and what impact it might have to make words for them.

[pba]

To be more clear, when I click on Hacker News items I have come to expect them to be of a somewhat more thoughtful nature; a la "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". Its my personal opinion that this item is more like a 'Dear Diary' entry and of significantly less intellectual value than say "Genomics Code Exceeds ExaOps on Summit Supercomputer", which is one of your own excellent submissions. The "world I live in" is one where I enjoy Hacker News items like your submission and do not enjoy this one.

I understand the "whole point" as put forth by the original writer who made up his own definition of sonder, but just because I paint a picture of a griffin doesn't mean it exists in reality. And similarly the definition of the word 'sonder' as he gives it also does not exist in reality. The problem I have with this thought experiment is that the internet is perpetuating the myth that this word has a valid historical etymology with widely accepted usage where in fact it sprang fully formed from an artist's mind.

[076ae80a-3c97-4]

'Sonder' is most certainly a word! https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sonder

[thieving_magpie]

Let's just go ahead and kill this back and forth.

Yes, sonder is a word. The definition used in the article is debatable as to whether it's a word. It's a word invented in 2012 by a guy that wrote a book about inventing new words for emotions.

>Coined in 2012 by John Koenig, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack words.[1][2] Related to German sonder- (“special”) and French sonder (“to probe”).[3]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sonder#Etymology

[msla]

Yes, Sonder is a word in German which means "special", as in the German term Sonderweg which is the German equivalent of "American Exceptionalism" ("German Exceptionalism", I suppose).

[bn-usd-mistake]

The German "sonder" referred to in this branch of the conversation (i.e. meaning special) is not a word on its own but a prefix for other words [0] (remember that germans like to build words from multiple separate parts and words).

While "sonder" itself is a word, it means something different when used on its own (without) [1].

0: https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Sonder_ 1: https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/sonder

[beat]

Any word in any language can be turned into an English word, simply by mispronouncing it.

[wenc]

Sonder is also quite a pedestrian word in German, as in "sonderangebot" (special offer, or sale!)