Linguistic Complexity

This is just a brief example to show the amount of information that is ultimately lost in translation from one language to another.

It was pouring in Milan the other day, not the kind of weather you hope for on your hour lunch break sandwiched in between two three-hour long courses.

Anyway, just for fun, we started talking about Halloween. Halloween, as many of you already know, doesn't have so much clout this side of the Atlantic. That being said, we hit the topic of candy, which, fortunately for me at least, opened a larger and much more interesting discussion that went a little something like this:

"Wait so, chocolate isn't candy?"

"No, chocolate is chocolate."

"But isn't it also sugary?"

"Well yes, but in Italian, chocolate is chocolate. Candies are small and sugary, but not chocolate."

"You're kidding me right? You're telling me that a Pocket Coffee (Italian chocolate with liquid coffee on the inside) isn't a candy. In English, that is for sure a candy."

"No, it's a chocolate."

"So, let me get this straight then. Dolcetto is the umbrella term from sweets. From this, it divides into cioccolata (chocolate), caramelle (candies) and baked goods which obviously aren't candy?"

"Yes. On top of that, stuff like cotton candy is an completely different category."

"Whoa, hold on a second here. You are telling me that cotton candy isn't candy. Just because it looks big doesn't change the fact that it is fundamentally just a bunch of sugar teased out into smalls strands that happens to be wrapped around a stick and looks like something different. I feel like your categories are flawed. See, we just simplify everything. It's all just candy. Shouldn't it just be about the fact that it's sugar anyway?"

"Matt, shut up."

"But seriously though, consider this..."

Ad infinitum.

Anyway, you can see how in English we tend to simplify some things, which, realistically, would be better lost in the complexity of categorization. I certainly don't think it hinders the expressive creativity of our language as was insinuated by my professor who said that English was barbaric. It does however give some clues into why English can be at the same time so incredibly easy and so incredibly difficult to learn.

If everything had a category and a specific word though, would it actually be that much easier to learn or would we in the end just be lost in the same structures of candy classification?