Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land • Hacker News Board

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#11

Post by pksebben » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 9:04 AM UTC

howlgarnish wrote: post #7

diN0bot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i found this article interesting and beautiful, and your snarky comment unhelpful.

Sorry for the snark, but if you have even a casual interest in linguistics, the concept of linguistic relativity (aka Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), namely that the language you speak determines/affects your world view, has been done to death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity This article presents yet another pop-sci version of this, with a fair dose of the "noble savage" trope to boot: > Our current cli…

"Sorry, but" is a poor substitute for "my bad". The error being pointed out to you is that your tone is dismissive, which this diatribe did nothing to correct. The culture people are trying to cultivate here is one that actively avoids suppressing ideas, and dismissiveness is antithetical to that end.

Furthermore, the conversation on linguistic relativism is far from done and dusted. The distinction you make between "strong" and "weak" forms sort of shows a loose grasp on the subject matter. I'm also more than a little stumped trying to figure out what correlation you meant.

... that's also not what "Turing complete" means.

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#12

Post by robocat » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 9:06 AM UTC

> Don’t believe everything you’ve heard, however: there are not hundreds of words for snow.

Skier’s learn a large number of words for different types of snow: everything from death cookies to boilerplate to corn snow. Vocabulary comes from interaction.

I am guessing different sports have wildly expanded vocabulary for certain elements of the relevant environment?

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#13

Post by eecc » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 9:08 AM UTC

howlgarnish wrote: post #7

diN0bot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i found this article interesting and beautiful, and your snarky comment unhelpful.

Sorry for the snark, but if you have even a casual interest in linguistics, the concept of linguistic relativity (aka Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), namely that the language you speak determines/affects your world view, has been done to death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity This article presents yet another pop-sci version of this, with a fair dose of the "noble savage" trope to boot: > Our current cli…

Well, I don’t think the point was to “import words from a specific language”. That’s a bit too dismissive IMHO.

Anyhow, as an Italian living in the Netherlands, I can tell that to a certain extent this concept does exist: look, people here use the same words for different meanings “in context”. So guess what? Code written by a Dutch often contains a Context object that affects how a generically named Business object behaves.

I wonder how it is in Germany? I guess they don’t use the 80 col code formatting rule :P

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#14

Post by yorwba » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 9:26 AM UTC

schoen wrote: post #6

The practice of drawing conclusions about people or their cultures based on properties of their language has been controversial since at least the original Sapir and Whorf stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_time_controversy If you admire or appreciate a culture, you might argue that the culture's values or history or distinctive outlook are directly reflected in grammatical features or vocabulary of an associa…

Your comment is a very good counterpoint to Sapir-Whorf-hypothesis-like opinions, but unfortunately it's also so general that it could've been posted on any article about language and culture, since you don't reference any specific content.

The submitted article doesn't talk about grammar and morphology or other typological features, so criticizing it on the grounds that there's no relationship between typology and geography is rather beside the point.

What it does talk about is specific vocabulary like amiraijaut for September, the "time when antlers lose their velvet". That's reflective of Inuttitut speakers insofar as that they must've been living close enough to animals with antlers to observe the loss of velvet at the time when that translation was coined.

That kind of connection between language and culture is rather uncontroversial. For example, it was inferred that proto-Austronesian speakers already had pigs, dogs and chickens based on the words for these animals across different branches of the language family being cognates that allowed reconstruction of those words in the proto-language. That hypothesis also squares with the archaeological evidence http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n2320/html/ch1...

Of course vocabulary can be learned (as the author herself demonstrates) and transmitted outside the original context (e.g. this comment), so the cultural link is rather weak. People who've never seen a velvet-covered antler can still talk about amiraijaut in the same way that people who do not worship a god of war can still talk about Mars and his month March.

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#15

Post by tremon » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 10:08 AM UTC

robocat wrote: post #12

> Don’t believe everything you’ve heard, however: there are not hundreds of words for snow. Skier’s learn a large number of words for different types of snow: everything from death cookies to boilerplate to corn snow. Vocabulary comes from interaction. I am guessing different sports have wildly expanded vocabulary for certain elements of the relevant environment?

It's a guess, but surfers might have multiple different words for waves.

And it's not just sports. Meteorologists have many different words to describe clouds.

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#16

Post by bloak » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 11:09 AM UTC

howlgarnish wrote: post #7

diN0bot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i found this article interesting and beautiful, and your snarky comment unhelpful.

Sorry for the snark, but if you have even a casual interest in linguistics, the concept of linguistic relativity (aka Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), namely that the language you speak determines/affects your world view, has been done to death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity This article presents yet another pop-sci version of this, with a fair dose of the "noble savage" trope to boot: > Our current cli…

I think there's strong evidence for weak forms of the hypothesis. For example, the available colour names in a language affects the way people classify colours as measured by the way they perform a task in which language is not used. See Guy Deutscher's "Through the language glass" for an overview of this and many other fun things.

There's also the whole business of how propagandists twist language around in order to influence people. How is that not an example of language affecting people's world view?

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#17

Post by spython » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 11:44 AM UTC

tremon wrote: post #15

robocat wrote: post #12

> Don’t believe everything you’ve heard, however: there are not hundreds of words for snow. Skier’s learn a large number of words for different types of snow: everything from death cookies to boilerplate to corn snow. Vocabulary comes from interaction. I am guessing different sports have wildly expanded vocabulary for certain elements of the relevant environment?

It's a guess, but surfers might have multiple different words for waves. And it's not just sports. Meteorologists have many different words to describe clouds.

And entomologists and software developers have many different words to describe bugs.

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#18

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 12:06 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #12

> Don’t believe everything you’ve heard, however: there are not hundreds of words for snow. Skier’s learn a large number of words for different types of snow: everything from death cookies to boilerplate to corn snow. Vocabulary comes from interaction. I am guessing different sports have wildly expanded vocabulary for certain elements of the relevant environment?

> I am guessing different sports have wildly expanded vocabulary

You're looking for the phrase "term of art"

https://www.lexico.com/definition/term_of_art

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/term-of-...

e.g. if I say I'm going to "bounce the box", I don't mean that I will throw a cardboard container at the floor, I mean that I will reboot a computer. And the sysadmins will know exactly what I mean.

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#19

Post by howlgarnish » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 12:13 PM UTC

pksebben wrote: post #11

howlgarnish wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the snark, but if you have even a casual interest in linguistics, the concept of linguistic relativity (aka Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), namely that the language you speak determines/affects your world view, has been done to death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity This article presents yet another pop-sci version of this, with a fair dose of the "noble savage" trope to boot: > Our current cli…

"Sorry, but" is a poor substitute for "my bad". The error being pointed out to you is that your tone is dismissive, which this diatribe did nothing to correct. The culture people are trying to cultivate here is one that actively avoids suppressing ideas, and dismissiveness is antithetical to that end. Furthermore, the conversation on linguistic relativism is far from done and dusted. The distinction you make between…

Correct, I'm dismissive because I don't think the article is saying anything particularly interesting or even correct. You're welcome to disagree, which is why we're arguing here in the comments section :)

As far as I tell (it's not my story after all), the author appears to be asserting that Inuktitut is somehow uniquely in tune with nature in general (dubious) and that we could change the way the Western world acts by absorbing some of those words (which sounds like linguistic determinism to me, not to mention even more dubious).

As for Turing completeness, my off the cuff analogy is that just like any Turing-complete programming language can implement any algorithm, any natural language can state any expressible human thought.

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#20

Post by protomyth » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 12:56 PM UTC

disown wrote: post #4

Isn't the language almost extinct and the community almost wiped out? I remember reading a while back that there are only a few hundred speakers and as more canadians move into the area, the inuit community and language were being endangered. Is there a systematic campaign to preserve the language and/or community? At the very least to set down the vocabulary/grammer/pronounciation/etc?

Every tribe is working very hard on language preservation and some are getting much better results than others. Some have been lost, but the folks in Alaska are putting a lot of effort into it.

I asked a question on HN for a grant that was directed about using ML to aid in language preservation. I didn't get any responses. We were trying to expand the tools available.