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Comment by NickPollard | Hacker News Reader

There's a form of English called E-Prime [1] that does this, the idea (I believe) is to clarify what you mean and be clear about how your ideas of things came about. It stops lazy assertions and gives you perspective.

For example, you can't say: Lua is better than Python[2]

Instead you say: I prefer Lua to Python

Or perhaps you say: More projects that I rate highly use Lua over Python.

Or maybe: Lua scores more highly on common performance benchmarks than Python

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime

[2] Just an example; I'm not actually saying Lua is better than Python

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I hate to stray so far from the main thread, but anyone who finds E-Prime interesting might enjoy reading about Evidentiality[1]. Some languages allow encoding the nature of evidence in verb forms, with the most cited example (Pomo) having forms to distinguish direct evidence (visual and nonvisual), circumstantial evidence, and hearsay. Somewhat esoteric but pretty cool. Make the observations and give the facts to the listener and let them reach a conclusion - contrast with American English where it is incredibly common to qualify the confidence we have in our own judgement ("It must.." "I suppose.." "I think.." "It probably", and of course all forms of "to be") rather than qualifying the confidence of your knowledge in an objective way.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality

Greek and Latin can do this in "indirect speech" ("He said that ..."). Depending on the verb forms, the actual speaker can indicate either that he agrees himself, or that it is just an assertion of the other person. So maybe not so esoteric!

Has anyone ever defined E-prime in E-prime? The wikipedia page doesn't offer one but I'd imagine it would have to be a series of prolog-like assertions about E-prime. You obviously can't just say "E-prime is ..."

E-prime begins with English and then removes the being verbs.

E-prime removes all conjugations of "to be" from English. <-- Not sure if quoting "to be" as a noun counts. :)

Shuzan held out his short staff and said, "If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?"

How does calling it a name oppose its reality? It still has a reality even if you concurrently give it a name.

Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach" explains this well in chapter 9 (Mumon and Gödel). I believe the argument goes that by calling it a specific thing you "oppose the reality" of all the other things it also is - no single name will ever suffice. Closed world assumption and all that.

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