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Lera Boroditsky: How Language Shapes Thought

Long Now

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The Importance of Vocabulary and Categories in English

I don't think actually numbers of words are that meaningful to count because in lots of languages, there's even this question of what counts as a word. So how many words for snow does English have? Does it have one word, snow? Or do we also count slush and sleet and powder and freshy and... Skiers have more words for snow. I don't know how many you know. All right. But there's probably some number of English, you know, the sort of college educated English person will have X number of words. There are numbers like that.

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