How to Exclaim | Hacker News Reader

How to Exclaim

themillions.com

18 pointsapollinaire19 comments

> Through Trump’s posturing and the mark’s erect body and one-balled bottom, ! has become “aggressively phallic,” and is in bad need of saving.

Why -- why -- do contemporary American writers feel the need to inject their political affiliation into every piece they make public? This is a pop-academic essay on the use of exclamations in literature, not a NYT op-ed.

The exclamation point is definitely falling out of fashion. It, like capitalizing "ok", is now a marker that the writer is older. Except in formal contexts, when a young person wants to exclaim they don't use an exclamation point, they use capitals.

"OK, look, I almost died!" <- Boomer

"Ok, look, I ALMOST DIED <- Zoomer

Have to disagree with the usage of OK. It's pretty standard usage in American English [1].

I wouldn't say that the user of OK is older;rather, they tend to be, "not dumb."

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK

Found the older person!

What is "correct" changes over time with how the language is used. Examples of recent changes include dropping the hyphen from double-e words like re-enter and pre-empt and pre-eminent, and growing acceptance of beginning sentences with conjunctions like "and".

fwiw {U+1F197 SQUARED OK} is capitalized “OK” in every emoji font I’ve ever seen

I agree - its truly tiresome. But then, if all the media is banging on about Trump + Russian collusion for 3 years, as if there was nothing else, I guess this does impact people.

It’s called “identity politics” for a reason: it’s no longer who one votes for but an entire world view about who one is —- and more importantly who one is not and it demands to be constantly displayed and reinforced.

Elaine feels strongly about the use of exclamation points in Seinfeld episode "The Sniffing Accountant" [1], leading her to break up a relationship.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sniffing_Accountant

> German doesn’t have a word for “mind”. Does that mean Germans don’t understand the concept?

As a german native speaker I belive "Bewusstsein" is the german word for "mind".

Interesting fact: "Bewusst - sein" written in two words is retranslated word by word to something like: "Beeing mindful"

I would translates "Bewusst sein" as "being conscious".

I agree. This is a better translation.

Depends. It can also mean "being aware (of something)": "(sich etw.) bewusst sein". In that sense I guess mindfulness could be translated this way (in case you're wondering, the German term for mindfulness is just "Mindfulness", just like the German term for computer is "Computer").

Mindfulness is often translated as Achtsamkeit

I'd go a bit more with "being (self-)aware". Being conscious sounds a bit more like a (positive) medical condition, compared to being unconscious, while awareness is more of a mindful thing.

Like most "language X has no word for Y" or "language X has a thousand words for Y" claims, it's true in a trivial sense and false in a practical sense.

Yes, there is no exact translation for "mind" that carries with it every contextual sense the word can have in English. Word-for-word translations generally don't work very well in any pair of languages.

German does however have plenty of words that have the same meaning as "mind" when used in the same context: Bewusstsein (consciousness), Verstand (reason), Geist (spirit/intellect), Gedanken (thoughts), Gehirn (brain), Meinung (opinion), Phantasie (imagination), Denkweise (way of thinking), Gemüt (disposition) and so on. So does German have no word for "mind" or a dozen?

Daniel Dennett created a nice word for such claims: "deepity". A statement that seems insightful (deep) at first but turns out to be trivial if you spend a few seconds reflecting on it.

German doesn't have a word for "mind" because it's an English word and there's a dozen words that already express the same ideas in every possible context. If you find a concrete context in which there is no word sufficiently expressing the same idea, that's when you create a new one or borrow one: like zeitgeist, a German word that could just as well have been translated as "spirit of the times" or angst, another German word that literally means fear or dread.

Thanks for clarifying.

A shame that article dismissed this so easily - doesn't paint a good picture on the author and makes me question what else did the author skim over.

denken; Meinung, Ansicht; Gedanken; Denkweise; Geist; Verstand.

But the point may have been made im Scherz, an expression that may exist in English, but to which some of its transatlantic speakers have an ambivalent relation.

It would explain why there have been no German psychologists nor philosophers, ..., wait ...

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