i was thinking about this the other day. i know the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is disputed but i think there must be something to linguistic relativism. like, in english words describing wealth are all tied to “worthiness”, and we talk about being wealthy as being more good.
in my language words describing wealth are all tied to effort: the ability and/or will to do something is “förmåga”, and if someone is wealthy they are “förmögen”, which i’m not entirely sure of the conjugation for but intuitively i read it as “has expended effort”. this is a more neutral term, and our class divide has historically been much shallower than the anglophone world. of course this is mostly due to different social systems but… why were they put in place ho begin with?
Can we please stop calling someone “being worth” x amount of money? It’s disgusting on a fundamental level.
In Germany, some people call people on the bottom of the money pyramid “socially weak”…
Disgusting as well. Whoever has billions and doesn’t help otherd, is socially weak!
Shit, I did a double take seeing your name. It’s good to see you here on lemmy.
Yes!
I guess we can’t exactly say he has more money, but we could say he has more “wealth.”
But he’s about the most worthless piece of shit on the planet.
i was thinking about this the other day. i know the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is disputed but i think there must be something to linguistic relativism. like, in english words describing wealth are all tied to “worthiness”, and we talk about being wealthy as being more good.
in my language words describing wealth are all tied to effort: the ability and/or will to do something is “förmåga”, and if someone is wealthy they are “förmögen”, which i’m not entirely sure of the conjugation for but intuitively i read it as “has expended effort”. this is a more neutral term, and our class divide has historically been much shallower than the anglophone world. of course this is mostly due to different social systems but… why were they put in place ho begin with?