Where does the English language lack?

[elysepopplewell]

I've been thinking a lot about language lately, and the thread Joseph41 started about the way our English language, even within Australia, varies, got me thinking some more.

I read this article by the Guardian that addresses the way that our English language hasn't evolved as the family dynamic has involved. As families are defined differently, there are new roles filled, where does language adjust?

In terms of family, here is something interesting the article raises:
People apply this vocabulary with a blunt literalism, asking adopted children about their “real parents”, in keeping with the presumption that nature consistently trumps nurture. People will likewise ask my husband and me which of us is our son’s “real father”. What is my relationship to my son’s surrogate and her wife, who are beloved members of our family – especially because the surrogate is also the mother of my husband’s biological children? She is not exactly a mother, because she is not a primary parent, but neither is she a special friend – the word friend denoting a category too indeterminate for who we are, especially in the age of Facebook.

Perhaps, is the fault not in the language itself, but the way we use it and make presumptions? I think we are always redefining words - is this just a situation of needing to redefine family roles according to their title?

In the french language, mother-in-law and step-mother are the same word, which translates to "beautiful mother" in English. I can't help but think this causes some misunderstandings at times.

Can you think of areas where the language fails to keep up with modern tech, or modern situations?

[Joseph41]

Really interesting thread.

It also opens a can of worms as to whether language primary influences thought or vice versa (or both). I mean, with your example of a "real father" - does that arise because we're linguistically confined to thinking of father as something that can only be applied once to a family?

That wasn't explained well, but yeah. Super interesting.

[elysepopplewell]

Really interesting thread.

It also opens a can of worms as to whether language primary influences thought or vice versa (or both). I mean, with your example of a "real father" - does that arise because we're linguistically confined to thinking of father as something that can only be applied once to a family?

That wasn't explained well, but yeah. Super interesting.

I understand - and I agree. I think we're quick to use "my friends are like my sisters/brothers." I have two half-sisters and I've never felt the need to clarify that they are half-sisters instead of full sisters until someone gets confused by the age difference. To me, they just feel like full-biological sisters. The word "half" has a lot to do with the reason I just declare them as sisters. In this case, half literally indicates that we share one biological parent instead of two. But half has connotations of being detached, or not wholesome, and that's not what I feel about my sisters. I don't necessarily think it's worth changing the term "half sisters" - especially when that is the chosen term for describing half-siblings for a lot of people, for all of the reasons I said I don't like to use it.

I can imagine that an adopted child asking about their "real parents" or a person from outside the family asking about the child's "real parents" would be really emotionally damaging to the adoptive parents. I can imagine it's not meant with malice, but it would be a bit of a kick in the guts in many situations I'm sure.

-

Stemming from this, I've searched some words that don't have exact translations in English, but I think it would be great to have!

Schnapsidee (German): An ingenious plan hatched while drunk.
Tarab (Arabic): Musically-induced ecstasy or enchantment
Toska (Russian): A wistful longing for one’s homeland
Mbuki-mvuki (Bantu): To shed clothes to dance uninhibited (This is surely an incredibly useful phrase, lol)
Ah-un (Japanese): Unspoken communication between close friends

[Joseph41]

^I used a bunch of these for a class the other month! Taken from this website here:

Mamihlapinatapei (Yagan): wordless look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are reluctant to start
Jayus (Indonesian): a joke so bad people can’t help but laugh
Kyoikumama (Japanese): a mother who relentlessly pushes her children academically
Tartle (Scottish): hesitating when introducing somebody because you’ve forgotten their name
Schadenfreude (German): taking pleasure from others’ misfortune
Tingo (Pascuense): taking everything from a friend’s house by gradually borrowing them (Homer Simpson?)

[heids]

Emotions often can't be expressed in English.

A concept English doesn't quite meet (nostalgia, wistfulness, yearning and longing are half way there):

- saudade (Portugese): an indefinable longing, yearning, or missing something or someone you have loved or do love, with the sense that it can never come back. A sense of incompleteness.

- fernweh (German): the opposite of homesickness, farsickness, or a longing for a place or thing you have never been or had.

- hiraeth (Welsh): a longing for the past, for something that may never have been.

- sehnsucht (German): inconsolable longing in the human heart for we know not what, or in Kipling's words, "That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of “Kubla Khan”, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves."
This article suggested we need words for:

- a vague and gnawing pang of anxiety centered around an IM window that has lulled (or when you get a "seen" notice but no reply)

- the state of being installed at a computer or laptop for an extended period of time without purpose, characterized by a blurry, formless anxiety undercut with something hard

[Joseph41]

- a vague and gnawing pang of anxiety centered around an IM window that has lulled (or when you get a "seen" notice but no reply)

- the state of being installed at a computer or laptop for an extended period of time without purpose, characterized by a blurry, formless anxiety undercut with something hard

Both of these are me rn lol.

[Joseph41]

This is not strictly related, but I was listening to a podcast about pronouns on the way to work this morning (yes, this is what I do with my spare time). And - in a bit of a different way to Elyse's opening post - it's clear that the English language is lacking in certain functions. At least to a degree.

I mean, I think (?) it's widely known that English presently lacks a standardised second person plural pronoun. We used to have one (namely thou), but it fell out of prominent usage.

"The silliest thing is that English actually had this one sorted a millennium ago. In Old English you find žu and ge (which became Middle English thou and ye/you). As Sara Malton explains in this useful little essay, the thou form in Middle English became more for social familiars and then by extension was considered to be a bit condescending and so fell out of regular use by around 1800. You broadened to fill both singular and plural."
SOURCE: http://www.superlinguo.com/post/10829418815/things-we-wish-english-had-second-person-plural

And so now we're stuck with alternatives, such as y'all, youse and you guys. My preferred alternative has for many years been youen, with plurality denoted by the suffix -en (as in children (which, interestingly, is double marked for plurality)).

It's very clear that filling this gap would be useful in social contexts. For example, if you're speaking in earshot ("hearing view", as I heard it referred to recently haha) of a small group but say to one person in particular, "do you want to go to the movies?", it's not immediately clear as to how many people you're including in the invitation.

Similarly, some contexts just require youen or equivalent. Like, if you go to a coffee shop and ask, "do you take card?", it's a bit weird - you're not really asking whether the individual takes card, but the shop more generally.

To relate this back to the opening post, I think it's definitely interesting that we still don't have a fix for this. In Australia at least (at least IMO), y'all feels American, youse carries connotations of low education and social class, and you guys debatably invokes gendered undertones.

Golly. Rant over.

[heids]

On the topic of you: I hate the generic you, i.e. where you talk about an unspecified person.  The issue is that it can sometimes sound like you're speaking specifically about the person you're talking to, because the generic you is exactly the same word as the specific you.  In some cases this can sound like you're accusing or attacking the person.

You can replace it with "one" (or, one could say, 'one can replace it with "one"'), but that often sounds too formal and stilted.

*Italics to highlight how often you use the generic you when talking...