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Comment by zadkey | Hacker News Reader

I can't disagree more with "language X is more precise/able to express more nuance than Y"

Japanese has 4 words for "If" each one is used in a different set of circumstances and has a slightly different meaning and flavor.

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/conditionals#Ho...

While all of those circumstances are covered by the English "If", the flavor and connotation is lost.

Similarly with Japanese and personal pronouns.

There is one word for "I" in English, but many many words for "I" in Japanese, each with it's own flavor and implications.

http://nihonshock.com/2009/11/the-many-ways-to-say-i/

These other "I"s express additional information about the person using them. It's not that this information cannot be expressed alternatively, but it's very efficient to simply use the right "I" to convey the right meaning.

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>It's not that this information cannot be expressed alternatively

So we agree then.

>but it's very efficient to simply use the right "I" to convey the right meaning.

How do you quantify efficiency here? Having more generic words can arguably be more efficient in situations where you don't actually care about which "I" you want to communicate: "I want an ice cream Sunday please". Besides some languages (and I believe Japanese to be one of them) are pro-drop and let you drop the pronouns in most cases, isn't that even more efficienter?

My native language is French, which unlike English kept the T/V (thou/you) nuance. You have familiar you and polite you. Do you consider that more efficient? Because as somebody who's usually pretty shy I've often found myself in awkward social situations where I simply want to say "how are you?" and "vous" feels too formal but at the same time I worry that "tu" might be a bit too brash and quite frankly I'd gladly trade them for a generic, neutral English-style "you" in situations like these.

Some other romance languages, like Brazilian Portuguese for instance, almost completely dropped the T/V distinction. Are they becoming less efficient or more?

What you describe comes across more like versatility.

It could be argued either way.

You could say its more efficient not to have the T/V distinction because then you don't have to think about how you want to express yourself.

Conversely, if you wanted to be very polite or very rude, people would have to rely more on context or vocal cues. Thus less efficient because now you have to express the politeness or rudeness in other ways.

But in Japanese, you are not only convening politeness information, which can be in the form of polite verbs (Keigo), polite verb endings, and polite pronouns, and honorifics, you are also partially conveying your own perception of your self importance and sense of masculinity or femininity.

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