In this post, we discuss an aspect of natural languages, specifically English. We also note that we only make observations about the written aspect of languages, not of the spoken aspect. We call this concept "word-distance" and define it similarly to how it is defined in computer science [1]:
Given two words, A and B, what is the distance between their meanings that warrants their existence as separate words?
We now define some common ways in which words with almost zero word-distance exist in languages like English:
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Context: We observe that some languages like English have different words that exist for different contexts even when they have the same meaning. For example, the word awesome in a casual context would be translated to impressive in a more serious context, although the distance between them is only contextual.
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Synonyms: Another way low word-distance can be introduced is via synonyms. Many times, synonyms can be used in the same context. For example, a synonym for awesome can be amazing, and both can be used in a casual context.
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Time[2]: Words can get out of fashion and become dependent on time, like thrice is no longer used; it is three times now.
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Space[2]: Even if the language used is the same, separation by space can create different new words for the same meaning. For example, in American English the word tap is not used; it is called faucet.
For a language that describes Nature, like Math is for Physics, we believe that it should be very clear what the word-distance between any two words A and B is. And possibly, there should be some way to quantify meaning. For a language for Physics, the only context is that of Nature, and synonyms just add noise to the language, so the above-mentioned ways can be avoided. Additionally, using different words at different times and in different places can add unnecessary noise.
We note that our observations are only from the point of view of the mind and may be valid for philosophy and science. From the point of view of the body and senses, i.e. for poetry and emotional expression, we believe that the existence of words that can be used interchangeably does provide colorfulness to the language. We have previously written about a perfect language[2], sound[3], and ether[4] that are related to this post.
Thus, we proposed an idea of word-distance based on meaning and made a few observations as to how low word-distance words add noise in scientific and philosophical contexts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance
[2] https://m-chaturvedi.github.io/blog/008/
[3] https://m-chaturvedi.github.io/blog/056/
[4] https://m-chaturvedi.github.io/blog/055/