Have you heard of the language Toki Pona? It forces you to taboo your words by virtue of the language only containing 120-ish words. It was invented by a linguist named Sonja Lang who was depressed and wanted a language that would force her to break her thoughts into manageable pieces. I’m fluent in it and can confirm that speaking it can get rid of certain confusions like this, but it also creates other, different confusions. [mortal, not-feathers, biped] has 3 confusions in it while [human] only has 1. Tabooing a word splits the confusion into 3 pieces. If we said [mortal, not-feathers, biped] instead of human, that could result in ambiguities related to bipedal-ness (what about creatures that are observed to sometimes walk on 2 legs and sometimes 4), lack of feathers (do porcupine quills count) and mortal (i forgot where i read this or if it’s true but apparently there are some microorganisms that can be reanimated by other microorganisms)
Have you heard of the language Toki Pona? It forces you to taboo your words by virtue of the language only containing 120-ish words. It was invented by a linguist named Sonja Lang who was depressed and wanted a language that would force her to break her thoughts into manageable pieces. I’m fluent in it and can confirm that speaking it can get rid of certain confusions like this, but it also creates other, different confusions. [mortal, not-feathers, biped] has 3 confusions in it while [human] only has 1. Tabooing a word splits the confusion into 3 pieces. If we said [mortal, not-feathers, biped] instead of human, that could result in ambiguities related to bipedal-ness (what about creatures that are observed to sometimes walk on 2 legs and sometimes 4), lack of feathers (do porcupine quills count) and mortal (i forgot where i read this or if it’s true but apparently there are some microorganisms that can be reanimated by other microorganisms)