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How To Use Taxonomy To Change Your Life
How we refer to ourselves and others is important: it defines our story, and our story defines us.
Languages
I’ve always believed that speaking more than one language gives the speaker an advantage. In fact, I think this is an understatement. The advantages are many. When one speaks more than two or three languages, the benefits grow exponentially.
This isn’t an article about languages, though, but about taxonomy, or the science of classification, and how it can be used to change our lives.
Of Ravens And Crows
In English, there is a distinction between ravens and crows. There are many discussions, articles and videos on spotting the differences between the two. If you spoke a Latin language, however, these discussions, articles and videos would simply not exist, because these languages don’t have two words to distinguish between. Both ”crow”and “raven“ refer to what the Romans would have called corvus in Latin. In fact, scientific taxonomy only has one species for the birds with many subspecies. Accordingly, Latin languages have only one word to refer to both crows and ravens: corb (Romanian and Catalan), corvo (Italian and Portuguese), corbeau (French) or cuervo (Spanish), for example.