On the English language and its playfulness—With 'hacking' as a bonus topic
I only speak two languages, English is the second one. Since English is a second language and I learnt it as an adult, I feel more limited when I use it—especially when I speak. My lack of mastery of it is the main reason. But even if I would be more skilful, its simplicity is also a limitation in and of itself, particularly in certain domains.
Take love, for instance. In that domain, and not surprisingly, English is way more limited than Spanish. In English, you have “I like you” and “I love you”, and that seems to be enough for most English speakers. But for me, it is like, there is a huge gap between liking someone and loving someone (or something), how do I express everything happening in between?! What should I say when 'like you' fall short, but 'love you' is too much?
Besides, I'm not sure if culture shapes the language or the other way around. It is clear that love and feelings are not important topics in Anglo-Saxon countries, or not as important as in the Romance-speaking world.
But.
There are aspects of the English language that I really like (really like means that is more than simply like, correct?). And I will use one of my favourite words as an example: playfulness.
Play is a verb. Playful, an adjective. But playfulness, is a noun!
I love (and I use love for the lack of a better word, but it is actually less than love but definitely more than like) how using these simple transformations a verb becomes an adjective and then a noun.
You cannot apply them on any verb, though, there are exceptions. And that's one of the annoying aspects of the language, there are many exceptions to the few rules. Its lack of consistency is more evident in the pronunciation.
Now, this reminded me of one of my favourite qualified nouns: playful cleverness, which I read for the first time in an essay[1] written by Richard Stallman. Here is a paragraph:
It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have “hack value”.
Richard Stallman
The best engineers I've worked with, and from whom I've learnt (and continue to learn) the craft, are not only smart, but playfully clever. Sadly, that generation is on its way out and new generations are completely different.
I encourage you to read Stallman's essay. Particularly if you think hacker is a synonym for criminal. That's propaganda. And one of the most basic strategies used in propaganda is language manipulation.
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