WORDS

Words became Language

We  can imagine our cave dwelling forebears inventing words to describe a vast world and their frighteningly small place in it. Fire was an important part of their lives. It must have been among their first words, long before adjectives were invented to describe good and bad fire. 

One-thousand kilometers away from their cave was another cave, a much larger cave,  home to a larger clan huddled together sheltered from a violent thunderstorm. They had their own words for fire, air and water. As they watched the storm, an old man reminded them of a powerful god who was making fire in front of them while another less powerful god was extinguishing the fire with water.

They knew about life and death, and had a words for different kinds of animals to eat. We will never know how long it took them to think abstractly about ideas like good and evil.  

We don’t want to torture the Bareshit story to the point of ridicule so we will make one last observation. Whoever wrote the Hebrew creation story was just repeating an oral tradition about how things came into existence.  By that time sophisticated writing had already been around for hundreds of years.   They wrote it and  others copied what they wrote, adding or subtracting from it.  The old writings disappeared while newer copies survived. We ended up with varying versions of  thousands of religious texts including the Torah (Pentateuch),  

They were the philosophers of their time. They made stuff up! On a basic level they were just trying to explain existence. Nothing has changed.

World Languages

There are approximately 7,159 separate living languages in the world as of 2025. The top 15 languages by number of native speakers (according to Ethnologue data for 2025) and their respective percentages of the world population (based on an estimated 8.236 billion people) are shown in the table below.  Imagine the lives of the people in each of these separate worlds created by the languages that rule among the people there.

Top 15 Most Spoken Languages

Does Language Really Define Culture?

It all boils down to a question of the chicken or the egg. A culture creates a language and the language perpetuates the culture.  Who defines what is open to question. Let’s explore it in more depth.

Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual’s beliefs, values, and practices should be understood within the context of their own culture rather than judged against the standards of another culture. It suggests that no culture is inherently superior or inferior; instead, each is a product of its historical, environmental, and social conditions.  It’s very non-judgemental.

This concept, pioneered by anthropologists like Franz Boas, emphasizes empathy and understanding across cultural boundaries, encouraging the idea that moral and ethical systems are relative to the cultural framework in which they exist. For example, practices like polygamy or specific dietary laws might be acceptable in one culture but frowned upon in another, and cultural relativism urges us to evaluate them based on their cultural context rather than universal norms.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, named after linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, posits that the structure and vocabulary of a language influence the way its speakers perceive and think about the world. It comes in two forms: the strong version (linguistic determinism), which claims language fully determines thought, and the weak version (linguistic relativity), which suggests language shapes but does not wholly determine thought and perception. This hypothesis is foundational in linguistic anthropology and cognitive science, linking language to cultural perception by arguing that the categories and distinctions encoded in a language affect how its speakers interpret reality. For instance, the Inuit language has multiple words for snow, which might enhance their speakers’ awareness of snow variations compared to languages with fewer terms. More about this later.

Strengths of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• Empirical Support from Linguistic Diversity: Studies of languages with unique grammatical structures (e.g., the Hopi language’s tense system, which lacks a clear past-present-future distinction, potentially affecting time perception) provide evidence that language can influence cognitive processes. Research by Lera Boroditsky on how Russian speakers, with distinct grammatical gender for objects, assign different attributes to those objects supports the weak version.

• Cultural Insight: The hypothesis highlights how language reflects and reinforces cultural values, such as the emphasis on collectivism in languages like Japanese (with honorifics) versus individualism in English, offering a tool to understand cultural differences.

• Cognitive Flexibility: It suggests that learning new languages can expand cognitive frameworks, supporting educational and multicultural approaches by showing how bilingualism might enhance problem-solving or perspective-taking.

Weaknesses of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• Overgeneralization Risk: The strong version (linguistic determinism) has been largely discredited, as it implies speakers of languages without certain terms (e.g., no word for “blue” in some ancient languages) cannot perceive those concepts, which is contradicted by evidence of universal human cognitive abilities.

• Limited Causality: Correlation between language and thought does not prove causation. For example, the many snow-related terms in Inuit languages might reflect environmental necessity rather than shaping perception.

• Individual Variation: The hypothesis overlooks individual differences within a linguistic community. Not all speakers of a language are equally influenced by its structure, as education, exposure, and personal experience also shape thought.

• Testing Difficulties: Measuring the hypothesis’s effects is complex due to confounding variables (e.g., culture, education) and the difficulty of isolating language’s impact on thought, leading to inconsistent experimental results.

Is It True?  

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s statement, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” from his early work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), encapsulates his early philosophical view on the relationship between language, thought, and reality. This assertion reflects his belief that language serves as the boundary of what an individual can conceive, express, or understand about the world. To expand on this idea, we can break it down into its key components and implications, while considering its evolution in his later philosophy.

Context and Early Philosophy

In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein argued that language is a structured system of propositions that mirror the logical structure of the world. He posited that the world consists of facts, which are combinations of states of affairs, and that language allows us to represent these facts through meaningful sentences. The “limits of my language” refer to the expressive capacity of an individual’s linguistic framework—vocabulary, grammar, and syntax—which determines the range of thoughts they can formulate. If a concept cannot be articulated within a language, Wittgenstein suggested, it effectively lies beyond the individual’s cognitive and experiential world. For example, if a language lacks terms for abstract emotions or complex scientific ideas, a speaker might struggle to conceptualize or discuss them, thus limiting their world to what their language can encode.

Implications of the Statement

• Language as a Cognitive Boundary: This view implies that language shapes perception and understanding. For instance, a speaker of a language with no future tense might conceptualize time differently, potentially focusing more on the present, as some interpretations of the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis suggest. Wittgenstein’s early stance aligns with linguistic determinism, where the structure of language dictates the boundaries of thought.

• Inexpressible Realities: The statement also hints at the existence of realities or experiences that transcend language. Wittgenstein famously concluded the Tractatus with, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” suggesting that metaphysical or ethical truths (e.g., the meaning of life) lie outside linguistic limits and thus outside the articulable world.

• Cultural and Individual Variation: The “my” in the statement emphasizes subjectivity. Different languages and individual linguistic competencies create diverse worlds. A multilingual person might inhabit multiple worlds, each defined by the limits of a specific language, while a monolingual person’s world is confined to their native tongue’s expressive range.

Evolution in Later Philosophy

Wittgenstein’s later work, particularly Philosophical Investigations (1953), shifted away from this rigid view. He moved toward a more pragmatic understanding of language as a “form of life,” where meaning arises from use within social contexts rather than a fixed logical structure. Here, the limits of language are not absolute but fluid, shaped by communal practices and interactions. For example, the word “game” has no single definition but gains meaning through its varied uses (e.g., chess, soccer, video games). This suggests that the world is not strictly limited by language but expanded by how language is employed, challenging the earlier deterministic stance.

Critiques and Broader Interpretation

Critics argue that Wittgenstein’s early position underestimates human capacity to transcend linguistic limits through non-verbal cognition (e.g., intuition, imagery) or by learning new languages. Modern neuroscience supports this, showing that thought can occur independently of language in some cases, such as spatial reasoning. However, the statement retains relevance in highlighting how language influences worldview—e.g., the richness of Inuit snow terminology might reflect and reinforce a detailed snow-related perception, as noted in linguistic relativity discussions.

Contemporary Relevance

Today, this idea resonates in debates about translation, artificial intelligence, and cultural exchange. If language limits the world, then imperfect translations or AI lacking cultural context might distort understanding. Conversely, expanding linguistic skills (e.g., learning Mandarin to grasp its tonal nuances) can broaden one’s world, aligning with Wittgenstein’s later emphasis on language as a living tool.

Wittgenstein’s statement underscores language as a lens that both enables and restricts our engagement with reality. While his early work frames it as a rigid boundary, his later philosophy softens this to a dynamic interplay, suggesting that the limits of our world are not fixed but evolve with how we use and expand our language within our cultural and social lives. We suggest that we as a living species actively shape our own evolution in ways not expressly stated in Darwin’s Theory. And language is a tool we use to shape our evolution.  It gives the often misunderstood phrase survival of the fittest a whole new meaning.