Semantics question - враньё и ложь

[slovami.livejournal.com]

Hello, community members! Happy Victory Day!

My friend's mother is interested in philosophy, and she recently heard a lecture about language and morality, where the professor - who is a philosopher, but not a linguist and not a Russian speaker(!) - argued that some languages have different words for "to lie" where one word is used for bad lies and another for less-bad lies. His example was Russian, враньё versus ложь. My friend's mom wanted to know - is it true that these words have different meanings and different moral values? (Like, ложь is really bad, and враньё is not so bad?)

I didn't know. What do you think?

Comments

Re: Tales, Fibs, and Lies

[slovami.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd really like to meet this philosopher guy. I kind of want to get his name from my friend's mom and write him a little note.

If we want to give him slightly more credit, we can imagine that he gets his information about Russians not only from Hollywood movies, but has perhaps done some reading on the problems with rule of law in post-Soviet Russia - bribery, impenetrable bureaucracy, corruption, etc. But if he wants to argue that those problems come from linguistic inadequacies, well, he's still an idiot!

Re: Tales, Fibs, and Lies

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

At least bribery, bureacuracy and corruption do not appear out of the absence (or ambundance) of the words that define them.