i was thinking about this the other day. i know the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is disputed but i think there must be something to linguistic relativism. like, in english words describing wealth are all tied to “worthiness”, and we talk about being wealthy as being more good.

in my language words describing wealth are all tied to effort: the ability and/or will to do something is “förmåga”, and if someone is wealthy they are “förmögen”, which i’m not entirely sure of the conjugation for but intuitively i read it as “has expended effort”. this is a more neutral term, and our class divide has historically been much shallower than the anglophone world. of course this is mostly due to different social systems but… why were they put in place ho begin with?