Re:Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘tal...
by always_good on Friday November 16, 2018 @08:17AM
(#18468495)
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.
Re:Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘tal...
by dmos62 on Friday November 16, 2018 @02:10PM
(#18471140)
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.
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.