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Not a native English speaker, but when exactly did "lessons" get replaced by "learnings"? To me the latter always sounds very unsophisticated.
by Bassilisk 3y ago
Not a native English speaker, but when exactly did "lessons" get replaced by "learnings"?
To me the latter always sounds very unsophisticated.
- doctor_eval 3y agoI’m a native English speaker and don’t use the phrase, but I’ve always thought that a lesson is something taught, but a learning is something learned. The former does not always imply the latter.
- radicalbyte 3y agoI've always assumed that "learnings" was the American English version of "lessons" in English English.
- burkaman 3y agoI think it's more Corporate English. I've never heard anyone say it outside of a work meeting.
- radicalbyte 3y agoThose are really American though.. like "co-worker", that isn't a word which was used in England. We'd use "colleague". It came from American English as part of the corporate lingo.
- zdragnar 3y agoThis particular case may not be a good example, but Brits tend to forget that they actually invented some of the words that they blame Americans for. Soccer is a perfect example, though I think the "Lost in the Pond" YouTube channel has a video or three with several more.
- vundercind 3y agoIt’s both corporate English, and quite recent. I’d say your likelihood of being misread or of giving a poor impression by using the word increases with the distance to the nearest person (other than you) holding an MBA.
- itronitron 3y agoI'd further categorize it as Corporate Hick English
- ojbyrne 3y agoAs a native English speaker, in my opinion it's incredibly pretentious.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoNative English speaker - I refuse to use "learnings". It's a ridiculous office-speak word.
- PaulStatezny 3y agoSame – just like "asks". "Here's the ask" versus "here's the request".
- arccy 3y agoat least asks lets you differentiate between human requests and http requests
- nequo 3y agoSoon enough we might be talking about HTTP GET asks and POST asks.
- collingreen 3y agoPlease not this
- dartos 3y agoNative English speaker. I don’t think they got replaced. Colloquially they mean the same thing. Maybe learnings sounds a little more casual and lessons more academic or formal.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoLearnings is corporate slang. Invented in the last couple decades by marketing types. Lessons is since the 13th century.
- pmontra 3y agoApparently it's a 21st century thing https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/learnings https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/learnings
- OJFord 3y agoHa, some time this century for sure. To me it's not 'unsophisticated' exactly, but it's definitely a certain sort of person - it's the 'Hi team - just sharing some learnings - please do reach out if you have any questions' sort of corporate speak.
- mp05 3y agoYeah I love those meetings where we have to double-click on a pain point and unpack what's going on so that we can do the work and stop treading water.
- OJFord 3y agoSteady on there I think we may need to breakout and take this offline. (You know, to a Slack huddle or email thread or something.)
- JasonSage 3y agoNot to discredit your experience, but I'm a native English speaker and I've never had the perception that it's unsophisticated. I think they can have a very slightly different connotation from one another, but in a lot of usage I think they're interchangeable.
- j4yav 3y agoI'm a native English speaker and it sounds less sophisticated to me. Something a middle management drone somewhere would say.
- ibejoeb 3y agoIt's corporate-speak. There are all sorts of these things. Lessons/learnings Requests/asks Solutions/solves Agreement/alignments It definitely sounds weird if you don't spend a lot of time in that world. It's like they replace the actual noun forms with an oddly cased verb form, i.e., nominalization. Oh, one of my most hated: Thoughts/ideations Jeez...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throwaway11460 3y agoAnd lessons is academy/state school-speak. Can't stand the word. Take your lessons home Ms Teacher, this is a place of business. Edit: funny how this is down voted but the corporate speak comment not :) we use the word learnings at home. It means what you have learned yourself, as opposed to getting a lesson about it.
- zeroCalories 3y agoThis is why people have adopted corp speak. They're traumatized by words and need to replace them to help with their ptsd. In 10 years "learnings" will be replaced by something like "considerations" or "updates" when zoomer managers get to set the rules.
- danielvaughn 3y agoI'm a native English speaker and I agree, though it could be a regional/cultural thing. It sounds pretty odd to me.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- karlshea 3y agoIt's very much just bro corporate speak, if I heard someone use "learnings" instead of "lessons" irl they would definitely fall into the slot for a specific type of person in my head. Very LinkedIn.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- HeckFeck 3y ago[dead]
- niam 3y agoI feel like the word unambiguously describes exactly what it is, which is all I can really ask for from a word. "Lesson" by itself might connote a more concrete transmission of knowledge (like a school lesson). Which is a meaningful distinction if the goal of the article is merely to muse about lessons they've learned rather than imply that this is a lesson from the writers to the audience. "Lesson learned" could imply the same thing, but is longer to say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I get what the comments here are saying about it sounding corporate, but I think this is a unique situation where this word actually makes sense.
- youngtaff 3y agoIt’s a bloody American thing… Lessons FTW… uses less characters too
- bigstrat2003 3y agoIt's not that. I'm American and I've never heard anyone use "learnings" instead of "lessons". It has to be coming from a specific subculture, though I have no idea where.
- brobinson 3y agoSame here. "Learnings" sounds ESL to me.
- jujube3 3y agoI think it happened when the Borat movie came out.
- mp05 3y agoAs others said, I'm not sure it's quite unsophisticated but you're not too far off. It's a specific jargon that comes from people I might perhaps consider unsophisticated if I'm in a bad mood, but more likely they're just happy to be politically correct in a fairly harmless manner. I feel like it's used because "lessons" may imply judgment to some people?
- jonsson101 3y agoThanks for your feedback on the title of my article. English is not my first language, and in my native tongue, the distinction between “learnings” and “lessons” isn’t as pronounced in this type of context. I appreciate the nuanced perspective and will probably update my title . My main goal is to share the experiences we’ve gathered over the years, and I hope that the essence of our journey with Kubernetes shines through, regardless of the terminology.
- lordgrenville 3y agoPeople complain about this word pretty often on HN. I don't like it either but I've just come to accept it.