She described it beautifully

The Swedish word for "science" is vetenskap. Its literal translation is something like "knowingship". The suffix -ship in English can indicate both the condition of being something and a skill as something. So vetenskap translates as to have the skill of knowledge. The difference to the English language here is that vetenskap does not only apply to formal sciences, but also humanities and philosophy, in the sense that it embraces any kind of knowledge that you can acquire by learning. Closer to the Portuguese notion of "tomar ciência", take notice, where the words for notice/knowledge and for science are the same (ciência).That small piece of trivia sparked some thought about what I will call descriptors for I lack the proper, probably existing, term. When I was a child I spent way too much time thinking about how we describe something. Who came up with the word "blue"? Where did it come from, what was the comparison to nature that lead the color blue to be described with that word? Eventually I would discover etymology (the vetenskap of the origin of words) and that it is a very dark pit in which I could live for my whole life - but to entertain you, "blue" derived from the proto-indian-european bhel that meant "to shine, flash" and in some different combinations would indicate colors, like bhel-was that meant, hear me out, "light-colored, blue, blond, yellow". Other languages just had a word for the color of the sea, blue or gray or green. Which means, nobody really knew what blue actually was, they just wanted to say that the sky was brightly colored.Picture this: you want to tell story in a world that is either a fantastical version of ours or an entirely new world where exists an entirely new civilization. Building from the ground up, you think of aspects of their existence that solidify the rules of that world. What's their history, their political system, their economy. Who are their celebrities, what is their culture, what do they do for entertainment, what do they eat, where do they live, etc etc. And when it comes to language and communication, I think of their descriptors. How do they describe stuff? Are they practical and logical or are their descriptors grounded in comparisons, meaning they name some essentials and everything derives from there. Are they romantic, synesthetic, describing from feelings or other senses that are not vision.Looking at things like that, descriptors sound like a "big picture" idea, something that helps with the foundations of your story, but my point here is that maybe they can be as important for the little things. Circling back to that topic of how characters communicate, some quirks of their personalities can be amplified by characteristics of their descriptors (I really need to find out the real name for this). Either because they were culturally trained to use a certain type of descriptors or because their mind processes things in a different way, hence they use different descriptors. Have you ever noticed that in pop culture happy-go-lucky characters, the type that is always wearing rose-colored glasses, are often portrayed as people who make up words, or invent little word games? Maybe it's a coincidence of a trope that kept on coming. Or they use similar descriptors.I vote for my theory, just because.-Maíra