Davor,
Didn't Nietzsche say in "Beyond Good and Evil" that language is what provides
the basis of comparing experience between people? He continues to say that
it is not enough for people to have their words in common, but they must have
their experiences in common. This is what brings the society together.
Personal connotations of the words are lost as these words proliferate among
large numbers of people ("The history of language is a history of
abbreviation). People need to get along and be able to quickly understand
what the other is talking about. This is especially needed in times of
danger. Through common experiences shared through language, a people is
united. They are separated from other groups of people through experiences
which they find common and other groups do not, and vice-versa. If people
all understand one particular experience, their language will develop more
around that experience, while the other people may have a language that
hardly develops anything about that experience. Isn't this what Pirsig was
talking about when he said that there are twelve different Eskimo words for
"snow," while in Hindi, there is only one word for "snow" which means the
same thing as "rain?"
Hopefully that was somewhat relevant.
Rasheed
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