The Whippet #134: Those that tremble as if they were mad
thewhippet.substack.com
We group things into arbitrary and overlapping categories: mammal, omnivore, tall. Therefore the number of categories in the world is larger than the number of things in the world.
I'm reminded of maybe my favorite second-hand anecdote, from a professor in college who went to study foodways with a tribe in the Amazon. He spoke Spanish fluently but only a little bit of the native language. When he arrived, they took him on a walk through the "neighborhood," (the local forest. He decided to get started on his foraging research, and asked them (in their language) as they encountered various plants, "Do you eat this?" "Yes," they frequently replied. Not wanting to be impolite, he would take a bit of each thing and chew it down- finding almost all of it bland at best and disgusting at worst. Weeks later he would find out what he was actually asking was, "Is this edible?" i.e., "Is this safe to ingest?" When they got back to the village, the guides laughed to the others and gestured at him, saying something like, "You'll never believe what this dude just ate!"
My response to any “actually” about language (including the hot dog sandwich argument) is to point out that language is not taxonomy, define anything however you want (a hot dog is in fact a hat), and move on your my life.
“ Whether or not someone would say “actually, tomato is a fruit” is the categorisation system we should use for deciding who goes to jail. (I realise given the number of readers, statistically some of you probably say the tomato thing, and are feeling quite offended now. If it helps, the jail would have a good rehabilitation program.)”
I'm reminded of maybe my favorite second-hand anecdote, from a professor in college who went to study foodways with a tribe in the Amazon. He spoke Spanish fluently but only a little bit of the native language. When he arrived, they took him on a walk through the "neighborhood," (the local forest. He decided to get started on his foraging research, and asked them (in their language) as they encountered various plants, "Do you eat this?" "Yes," they frequently replied. Not wanting to be impolite, he would take a bit of each thing and chew it down- finding almost all of it bland at best and disgusting at worst. Weeks later he would find out what he was actually asking was, "Is this edible?" i.e., "Is this safe to ingest?" When they got back to the village, the guides laughed to the others and gestured at him, saying something like, "You'll never believe what this dude just ate!"
My response to any “actually” about language (including the hot dog sandwich argument) is to point out that language is not taxonomy, define anything however you want (a hot dog is in fact a hat), and move on your my life.
Omg I’d completely forgotten about Round vs Pointy!
THIS was hilarious:
“ Whether or not someone would say “actually, tomato is a fruit” is the categorisation system we should use for deciding who goes to jail. (I realise given the number of readers, statistically some of you probably say the tomato thing, and are feeling quite offended now. If it helps, the jail would have a good rehabilitation program.)”
❤️❤️❤️
Re Gauche, I haven't actually checked this but it has to come from the French word for left right? Which I just think is interesting.