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Talk:World History Lecture Seven (view source)
Revision as of 22:10, March 9, 2009
, 22:10, March 9, 2009→Genocide
*“Van Diemen’s Land” by James Boyce, pub 2008. [[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 18:00, 9 March 2009 (EDT)
*“Van Diemen’s Land” by James Boyce, pub 2008. [[User:AlanE|AlanE]] 18:00, 9 March 2009 (EDT)
::Coupled with that, the idea that if the word doesn't exist the concept doesn't exist is wrong in every sense. To this day English speakers are capable of embracing and understanding concepts that have no specific English word ascribed to the meaning of the concept. A patently obvious example of this is the smell of freshly cut grass. This is a concept that all of us understand immediately, a concept that would have been around for millenia, and yet there is no word in English for the concept of the smell of fershly cut grass. If you want to say that something smells like freshly cut grass you have to say 'it smells like freshly cut grass'. Now, say that I invent a word to describe that smell: chlorowhiff, and go further and say that chlorowhiff becomes popular in use and enters the dictionary. the word was invented on the 9th March 2009 but it is immediately and patently obvious that the concept existed long before the creation of the word. Or consider how long humanity has been eating chicken. Those people who have eaten chicken (which is probably all of us reading this) understand the concept of the taste of chicken, but English has no word that specifically means the taste of chicken. If we want to say that something tastes of chicken then we say 'it tastes of chicken', yet the lack of a word in English that means 'the taste of chicken' doesn't mean that Enlgish speakers haven't grasped the concept. Or how about words in other languages. Take the Welsh word 'hiraedd' or the Japanese word 'giri'. Both words express concepts that English speakers are capable of understanding and even experiencing, yet neither word has an equivalent English word that defines the concepts enshrined in those two words. As to the word genocide, well it is a word that, in all likelyhood, was dreamt up by committee as a way of sounding official in describing a concept that has been around for as long as humanity has been around.--[[User:Ieuan|Ieuan]] 18:10, 9 March 2009 (EDT)