Different ways to express Harmony? · 6:30pm Apr 24th, 2014
Can you think of anyway that their culture might try to express harmony? I mean, how the concept of harmony might show up in their language or customs?
One way I thought they'd express just how constantly-on-their-minds the idea of harmony is, is by having 2 forms of the word "and."
In Equish, there are two forms of the word “and.” One for conjoining thematically related statements and one to describe two independent statements that both happen to be true simultaneously. The words for those are [Ersh] and [Tsersh], respectively. Basically, all you need to know is that you’d use a different ‘and’ for the sentence: “the atomic weight of iron is 55.8 and I like nipples” than you would for “the forest is dangerous and you can get killed.”
Ignore the impersonalized dryness of the passage. I'll fix it when my mind is clearer.
Let me hear your thoughts, feelings, objections, head canons. And I like nipples.
Sorry, I didn't explain well. It's like how the Eskimo have 100 different words for snow (they actually don't have that many, but still). If something is important to a culture or happens frequently, they'll develop a lot of different words describing different aspects of whatever it, the important thing, is.
Like pastoralists (technologically primitive cultures who herd cattle instead of raising crops) will have 20 words for different types of cattle. 'Female cow with white body and brown head' is one word to them. 'Male juvenile calf with black body' is another single word. Cows are their world, so they create single-word terms so that they can describe their world quickly.
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My reason for having two forms of the word 'and' is that I believed that the concept of harmony would be so prevalent in their culture, that they'd want to distinguish between things that are harmonious (such as two ideas that are congruent or interdependent) and things that have nothing to do with each other.
I couldn't find confirmation of this, and I haven't studied Russian for eight years, so don't trust my words, but I vaguely remember Russian either doing exactly this or doing something incredibly similar to this.
Either way this is fairly similar to the difference between the English "and" and "but", but with an extra gradation between.
2042862 I had no idea any European language did that! Well, shit. Now I feel less creative.
2042876
Ah! I know what I was remembering now. It wasn't Russian, it was Japanese, which does something similar.
Japanese has two particles, which are basically used to mean "and", but they are slightly different.
"や (ya)" is used to mean "and", but with the understanding that more things might be included among the mentioned things. "We had cheese, shrimp, cookies, and more!" would be an example of when Japanese would use "や (ya)". Basically Japanese wouldn't need to say "more" in this context because that would be communicated by "や (ya)".
"と (to)" is used to mean "and", but with the understanding no more things are included among the mentioned things. "Ken and Barbie went out on a private outing" would be an example of when Japanese would use "と (to)". Basically Japanese wouldn't need to say "private" in this context because that would be communicated by "と (to)".
2042966 I see, that's brilliant and subtle. In the case you listed previously, would Japanese make use of the words "private" or "unspecified larger amounts" in their language outside of "ya" and "to?" Would children who use "ya" and "to" not learn "private" and "more" words until they were relatively old? Like, those words would be school-taught vocabulary words for 10 year olds?
Uh... well... I can't think of anything to add to that really.
2042995
Remember, "to" doesn't mean "private", it just would have communicated Ken and Barbie were doing something by themselves. It's a context thing.