Hacker News Reader

Comment by Wololooo | Hacker News Reader

We? I don't think I've seen anyone but the people absolutely not understanding the gravity of the situation were cheering on. And I'm not even American.

View on HN

> And I'm not even American.

Well over here, 30% still approve of it and they will openly praise how much money DOGE "saved us." It's quite eye opening talking to them. They live in a totally different reality

Any time they act like they disapprove of something the administration is doing, like the aimless war, they will change their tune in a few weeks when Fox gets it's talking points down.

"We" is such an imprecise word for a pool of people. I believe Chinese has two flavors, "zanmen" including the listener too, and "women" excluding the listener. Obviously "we" did not elect Trump, only "a majority of the US voters who voted", and even the others may sadly use "we" though they didn't, because they are members of the political body that did. Just like the "they" of Israel that harass Palestinians and throw up West Bank settlements do not reflect all of Israel, and the average Soviet citizen did not reflect the behavior of the Soviet government.

In English, you can say "we" or "they"

But "they" excludes the speaker.

We isn't an imprecise word at all, it's very precise in it's definition.

I can honestly not come up with a single example of the distinction between 'zanmen and women' being useful besides this specific case where you really want to be able to say in 1 sentence that you identify as the same group as someone else, but that that group is subdivided into 2 groups, and you're talking about the sub-group that you're specifically not a part of.

> I believe Chinese has two flavors, "zanmen" including the listener too, and "women" excluding the listener.

So does Telugu.

మనము (manamu) - including the listener మేము (memu) - excluding the listener

I'm pretty sure most other Asian languages have them too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com