Do words shape what you can think?

Some languages have no words for left and right; speakers use compass directions — “the cup is to your north-east” — and they stay oriented in ways visitors find uncanny. Which invites an obvious question. Does the language give them an ability, or does the ability produce the language?

The strong version of the claim, that language determines what you can think, has not survived. If it were true, translation would be impossible, and it clearly is not: you are reading arguments written in languages with different words for things and none of the ideas have been lost on the way. What survives is softer and still interesting. Language shapes what is easy to notice, and things that are easy to notice get thought about more.

So the honest position is in between, and the two extremes are both easy to say and easy to refute. “Language just labels pre-existing thoughts” fails when you learn a new word and find your perception has changed. “Language decides what you can think” fails the first time you hit a feeling with no word for it and reach for a metaphor instead.

Confucius had the practical version, and it is the best test of the idea. He said the first job of anyone repairing a society is to make words mean what they say. When a leader’s word for loyalty stops matching the thing, everything downstream — law, promise, family — rots quietly, because nobody can check anything against anything. That is a claim about language you can watch happening in the news.

Try it

Try to think a thought you have no words for. When you find one, describe it using only words you already have. Notice how much of it survives.

What do you think?

Do you think there is a right answer to this question?

Yes, I think soNo — and here's whyI'm not sure yet

Talk about it

• Can you have a feeling you can't name?
• Does naming something change what it is?
• If a word is missing from your language, is the idea missing too?

Yes, but… — the arguments people actually make

• I know what I mean even when I can't say it.

  Sometimes. But watch what happens when you try to explain it — usually the thought turns out to be a feeling plus a gesture, and the explaining is where the thinking actually happens.

• Language just labels thoughts that exist already.

  Then a word you learn should never change what you notice. Learn the names for twenty kinds of cloud and see whether the sky starts looking different.

• Languages differ, so thought must be different too.

  Speakers of any language can describe anything given enough words. What changes is what is easy to notice — not what is possible.

What other philosophers think

• Ludwig WittgensteinWrote that the limits of my language mean the limits of my world — thinking is not a private activity that words are later poured into.
• Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee WhorfArgued that the language you speak shapes what you notice and how you carve up experience. The strong version of this has not survived testing.
• ConfuciusThought the first job of anyone fixing a society was rectifying names: if words stop matching things, he said, nothing downstream can be put right.

If you want to go further

• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus — Ludwig Wittgenstein1921. The 'limits of my language' claim appears in proposition 5.6.
• Language, Thought, and Reality — Benjamin Lee WhorfThe collected essays behind linguistic relativity — read with the later criticisms alongside.

Most of these were written for adults, which is why it is worth reading them with someone older.