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Comment by soraminazuki | Hacker News Reader

> > It's completely unnecessary. There are many other ways to say what the writer means by "comprised of". It adds nothing to the language.

I wonder if the editor read "1984" and straight up copied its ideas. In the novel, the totalitarian state of Oceania uses that exact same justification to promote the use of the Newspeak language:

> After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? ... Take ‘good’, for instance. If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well—better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

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>I wonder if the editor read "1984" and straight up copied its ideas

Maybe George Orwell copied the idea from Esperanto. For instance, "dark" in Esperanto is "notlight", and left is "notright".

I can get behind the "notlight" but "notright"... feels like something my brain would never get used to haha.

Because based on the words it's composed of, it's different from "left" - it would include "forward" and "backward".

Similarly for "notlight" implying including twilight, which "dark" does not.

> twilight

Perhaps that is lightandnotlight. We almost have notlight in English: unlit. An unlit room feels twilighty to me.

> notright

Left in Esperanto: maldekstra

I can’t imagine why a language designer would choose “mal” as the prefix for “not”. In English and Spanish (two common languages), mal has some bad connotations (malodour, malady, malfeasance, malo, malformed). Let’s try the opposite: “not left” is definitely something different from “right” - urrrgggh. “Do not go left” doesn’t mean to go right.

However it looks like Esperanto also has “liva”. Turnu liven tuj post la angulo ~= Turn left immediately after the corner.

> I can’t imagine why a language designer would choose “mal” as the prefix for “not”. In English and Spanish (two common languages), mal has some bad connotations (malodour, malady, malfeasance, malo, malformed).

Well, there's also the Latin word "sinister" which has a very different meaning in English... Kinda seems like a common theme.

Literally see maladroit

> Let’s try the opposite: “not left” is definitely something different from “right” - urrrgggh. “Do not go left” doesn’t mean to go right.

“maldekstra” doesn't actually mean “not right” — mal in Esperanto more precisely means “opposite.” Left is opposite of right, and so malmaldekstra (opposite of the opposite of right) is still right (dekstra).

“Not right” in Esperanto doesn't exactly mean left, either, just like in in English. That'd be ne + dekstra = nedesktra.

Sure. It just feels like a malicious choice for left. No soy maleducado. !Tengo mucho mano izquirdo, y es derecho mio a decir la palabra “maldekstra” es «malappropriate»¡

http://www.anmal.uma.es/Numero9/Forment.htm

  Joan Bastardas habla de la extrañeza de la existencia de la palabra ensinistrar del catalán, puesto que tiene un significado claramente positivo a pesar de ser derivado de siniestro-a. «... ensinistrar que no deixa de sorprendre els qui s´acosten al català des d´altres llengües romàniques, en què les idees d´habilitat i aptesa s´associen amb la mà dreta i no amb la mà esquerra, el castellà adiestrar, l´italià addestrare; en francès hi ha dexterité, però també en català hi ha destresa i destre-a 'hàbil', 'expert', i també maldestre, com el francès maladroit». (Bastardas 1996: 26)

  la contraposición entre la bondad y la justicia — simbolizados por la derecha — y la maldad, el egoísmo —relacionados con la izquierda—.

> However it looks like Esperanto also has “liva”. Turnu liven tuj post la angulo ~= Turn left immediately after the corner.

If you wanted to be understood, it'd be better to say maldekstren though. I'd never heard of liv-, English Wiktionary lists it as "neologism, nonstandard" and Reta Vortaro as "malofte" (infrequent).

The word "notright" is as clear of an example as you can get: does it mean straight or left? Up?

The most confoundingly powerful feature of language is ambiguity: on one hand, you can't take it literally; on the other hand, you don't have to.

I think the example doesn't quite do it justice, a better interpretation would be antiright, which would be unambiguous

in orwellian newspeak, the whole point is to be ambigious so you can't point at harm.

If you like that you're gonna love TokiPona. So few words that even basic objects might take a paragraph to explain.

Esperanto dekstra only means right, the direction/side, though, and so maldekstra only means left, the direction/side.

I don't agree with your 1984 analogy at all.

A better source might be George Orwell's actual, explicit opinions on politics and the English language:

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Orwell certainly did not take an "anything goes" approach to language, which is essentially what you and others argue for, in the mistaken belief that you're somehow striking a blow at totalitarianism. From my perspective, your position is much closer to the Newspeak ethos than that of someone who actually cares about correct usage.

hey qq who decides what correct is

The marketplace of ideas.

Well this guy on Wikipedia, who clearly cares more then you do, for one. Dictionaries, style guides, people like Orwell, the French do have a ministry to maintain the language.

I've answered your question, now I have one for you: Did you even glance at the link?

I'm sorry, these epistemologically relativist arguments lead to utterly absurd conclusions. How does wikipedia work at all? How can we ever make judgements about anything?

It's bad Cartesianism. Just because we can't know something absolutely doesn't mean we can't know anything. Just because language changes doesn't mean there's no such thing as correct and incorrect usage.

I don't think anyone is saying that "anything goes" and there's no right or wrong ways of writing, they're just arguing that your narrow definition of "correct" is too narrow to be useful for anything other than gatekeeping.

My main point is only that comparing this to newspeak is totally backwards.

How does wikipedia work? How does language work? Linguists have firmly determined that it does not work by a coterie of elites handing down decisions about correctness, regardless of what france pretends their "immortels" do.

That also doesn't mean "anything goes" either, obviously, since we do clearly speak a mutually comprehensible dialect through no intentional coordination. It's an interesting subject! You could stand to have some curiosity about its actual mechanics, there's a lot to be learned that is invisible to you if you've already decided how it should work.

You literally didn't answer my one question, yet you keep asking more. Even Socrates answered questions when asked.

I could engage your other points, but why bother

You want me to answer questions like "how do we make judgements about things?" I don't think this is that sort of venue sorry.

Okay now you're just trolling me. The question that starts with "I have a question for you." Did you look at the Orwell link.

> Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Language is indeed consciously shaped. Look at the history of Italian. It doesn't just happen, and Wikipedia definitely doesn't just happen.

And if you disagree with Orwell, fine, just don't trot him out in support of your points. Which was my original point.

Oh I think you're talking to two different people here, sorry. I never mentioned orwell.

> Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

That's what language is. That's how language works.

I love Orwell, but he was flat wrong in that essay. He was playing at being a linguist and showing his ignorance.

> Dictionaries

Dictionaries generally explicitly do not define what is correct, they describe what is in use (often with notes about the contexts of common use).

> style guides

Style guides do not define what is correct for the language, they define what is correct for those adopting the style, they are intentionally by design more limited than what is acceptable in the language to serve, for adopting institutions, the function of providing a common style (that’s why they are called style guides, rather than language guides.)

Noah Webster, of the US Webster's Dictionary was a language reformer and created a prescriptive dictionary intended to "correctly instruct" people about what he believed the correct use and spelling of English to be.

He introduced American spelling and American English.

By constrast the Oxford English Dictionary was created by lexicographers intent on mapping the usage of English across space and time, they created multiple entries for each form | usage of root words and added copious notes (in the full multi volume OED editions) regarding first usage, alternate spellings, regional changes, etc.

The OED is a descriptive dictionary.

> Noah Webster, of the US Webster’s Dictionary was a language reformer and created a prescriptive dictionary intended to “correctly instruct” people about what he believed the correct use and spelling of English to be

Yes, he was.

And while some of his reforms caught on and remain in use to this day, his approach to dictionaries generally did not. When I said dictionaries do not do that, the verb tense was significant.

> Noah Webster [...] created a prescriptive dictionary intended to "correctly instruct" [...]

Webster lived 200 years ago, and today prescriptivism is rejected by the overwhelming majority of linguists, because it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what language is. Prescriptivism is about as well supported as phrenology, and shares many of its discriminatory goals. It was something people made up, that turned out to not make any actual sense, and that was subsequently abandoned by almost everyone.

Webster can instruct people on how to correctly write "Webster Language". But he cannot instruct people on how to correctly write English. English is whatever its users say and write. No other sensible definition exists.

> your position is much closer to the Newspeak ethos

I sure haven't stated "my position" in any of my previous comments. But assuming it refers to common english, I'm reminded of another "1984" concept: doublethink.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink

Compare this:

> common english is Newspeak

with this:

> War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength

The similarity is uncanny.

> A better source might be

... the actual book being discussed?

> https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Exactly which part of Orwell's opinion did you find relevant to this discussion and how does it relate to yours? This is missing from your comment.

> which is essentially what you and others argue for,

Please don't put words in my or anyone else's mouth to make your point. It's extremely disrespectful.

> > War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength

> The similarity is uncanny.

Is it extremely disrespectful to point out that your previous comment is defending the position that "to comprise is to compose"?

First, my original comment wasn't about defending anything. My objection was limited to a specific justification the Wikipedia editor made.

Second, the phrase is "comprised of," not "to comprise."

Finally, I'd also like to point out that the editor and all people in this thread clearly knows how the phrase is used today. What's the point of arguing about the correctness of a phrase when it does a perfect job of conveying meaning?

> What's the point of arguing about the correctness of a phrase when it does a perfect job of conveying meaning?

See this is what I mean when I say that your position is closer to the Newspeak ethos. What's wrong with ungood, after all? It does a perfect job of conveying meaning.

See this is what I mean when I say your arguments resemble doublethink.

The Newspeak language eradicates words on the basis that they're redundant. The Wikipedia editor went to eradicate a phrase using the same justification. There's an obvious parallel here.

> It does a perfect job of conveying meaning.

This is a fact that holds true regardless of one's opinion. Yet, you're fallaciously framing this as an opinion to make it look like Oceania and I hold the same opinion.

When it comes to my actual opinion, I favor languages spoken as is. Newspeak, on the others hand, is an artificially restricted one. The false equivalence you made between these two conflicting positions can only be explained as doublethink.

Orwell wasn't a linguist, so his ideas about language are suspect. Linguists study languages as natural things because that's how it works: Humans speak, humans change how they speak, and language evolves, whereas "Newspeak" was deliberately constructed such that "correctness" was controlled by a tight coterie of people in charge, utterly without regard for making language useful, which you'd know if you read the novel it comes from.

Why people think they're entitled to their own ignorance is quite beyond me.

First of all, I have read 1984, and I wouldn't take issue with the analogy if I hadn't. Whether you have read any other books, I cannot say.

Second, you say Orwell isn't a linguist, and language just happens, but then you explicitly reference his fictional account of a prescribed language. Clearly, Esperanto is a prescribed language. So prescribed languages do exist, and political forces can shape languages, you just don't think that happens with English. Well I do. People reference so-called "descriptive" dictionaries and grammars, yet don't those texts themselves inherently acquire a prescriptive force, insofar as they originate at elite institutions like Oxford and Cambridge and UChicago? Just as Dante's works acquired a prescriptive force for the Italian that was once highly regional, but needed standardization to support the nation-state.

I think descriptivism is an incredibly naive position to take when talking about modern languages that have agglomerated for explicit social, political, and economic projects, and I think that was Orwell's point.

Similar to David Foster Wallace's essay on English, we can either naively push the descriptivist line, or we can accept that "the powers that be" do indeed shape our language, and try to have our own voices heard, for what English ought to be.

So we can rail against the Newspeak that some editor on Wikipedia is supposedly forcing on us. We can say it's literally 1984. It's ungood! And we can happily return to talking about grokking and gatekeeping and unaliving, and undocumented immigrants, and unhoused people, and utilizing the new library, believing these words are good because they happened and that they happened because they're good.

> Clearly, Esperanto is a prescribed language. So prescribed languages do exist and political forces can shape languages, you just don't think that happens with English.

You're misreading me: I'm saying that English didn't come into existence by fiat, and that it doesn't evolve through fiat most of the time. English, being a natural language as opposed to a constructed one, evolves naturally.

> Well I do. People reference so-called "descriptive" dictionaries and grammars, yet don't those texts themselves inherently acquire a prescriptive force, insofar as they originate at elite institutions like Oxford and Cambridge and UChicago?

That doesn't change the fact they're descriptive. It also doesn't change the fact linguistics is descriptive.

> I think descriptivism is an incredibly naive position to take when talking about modern languages that have agglomerated for explicit social, political, and economic projects, and I think that was Orwell's point.

Well, you can get a degree in linguistics and learn what "descriptivism" actually means, then, because you certainly don't know it now.

Okay, originally I just had to read 1984, to comment on an hn thread, now I need a 4 year linguistics degree. Increasing appeals to authority, when the previous one fails you.

You seem to be arguing that descriptivism is just what linguistics "does", therefore it does not inherently contradict prescriptivism? Because they have two separate roles. And if descriptivists stayed in their lane, and allowed prescription where obviously necessary (like when teaching a language) then we wouldn't be having this argument in the first place.

But if descriptivists turn around and say "therefore thou shalt not prescribe"، then we do have a problem, and descriptivists are indeed naive, they are the real prescribers of an ill-conceived political program.

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