The words you use don’t just describe your thinking. They shape it. Change “I have to” to “I choose to” and suddenly I have increased my agency. Replace “I failed” with “when I’m at my best” and the shame lifts. Language doesn’t describe experience—it creates it. Another powerful thought: Are there thoughts I can’t have because I don’t have the words for them? What about the distinctions my language doesn’t make, the concepts it doesn’t carve out, the realities it doesn’t acknowledge? English gives me one word for love. Greek gives you four. Are Greek speakers able to think about love in ways I literally cannot?
- The Theory: Sapir-Whorf and Linguistic Relativity
- When Languages Cut Reality Differently
- The Dark Side: Newspeak and Deliberate Manipulation
- What This Means for How I Think
- Related Frameworks
The Theory: Sapir-Whorf and Linguistic Relativity
The idea that language shapes thought is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or linguistic relativity, named after linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf.
Strong vs. Weak Forms
Strong form (linguistic determinism): Language determines thought. You literally cannot think about concepts you don’t have words for. The limits of your language are the limits of your world.
Weak form (linguistic relativity): Language influences thought. Your native language makes certain ways of thinking easier, more natural, more automatic—but not impossible to escape.
Most linguists reject the strong form. I can think about Greek concepts of love even though English doesn’t distinguish them natively. I can learn about Inuit snow categories and start noticing them myself.
But the weak form? That one feels right to me, I can do it, but it’s inefficient.
When Languages Cut Reality Differently
Four Greek Words for Love
Ancient Greek didn’t have a single word for “love.” They had at least four distinct concepts:
Agape (ἀγάπη) - Unconditional love
- The love that asks nothing in return
- Sacrificial, divine love
- What Christians mean by “God’s love”
- The kind where you’d give up everything for someone
Eros (ἔρως) - Romantic love
- Physical attraction and desire
- Passionate, intense connection
- The chemistry that draws you to someone
- What most English speakers think of first when they hear “love”
Philia (φιλία) - Friendship love
- Deep friendship and loyalty
- Built on shared experiences and values
- The bond between brothers-in-arms
- What the ancient Greeks considered the highest form of love
Storge (στοργή) - Familial love
- Natural affection between family members
- The default love parents feel for children
- Comfortable, enduring, taken-for-granted
- Love by proximity and biology
When I say “I love my wife” and “I love pizza,” I’m using the same word for completely different experiences. A Greek speaker would never make that mistake—they’d use eros for the wife and… well, probably not any of these words for pizza.
Does having separate words mean Greek speakers experience these different loves more distinctly? Can they navigate romantic relationships with more precision because their language forces them to distinguish eros from philia from agape?
I don’t know. But I notice that I’ve started using these Greek terms in my own thinking. And yes, it does feel like I’m making distinctions I couldn’t quite make before.
The Inuit Snow Vocabulary (Myth and Reality)
You’ve probably heard that Eskimos have 50 or 100 words for snow. This is partly myth, but the reality is more interesting than the myth.
The myth: Inuit languages have an astronomical number of discrete words for snow, proving that language shapes perception.
The reality: It’s complicated. Here’s what’s actually true:
- Proto-Eskimoan (the ancestral language) had about three root words for snow: falling snow, fallen snow, and snow on the ground
- But Eskimo-Aleut languages are agglutinative—they build complex words from smaller units
- So you can create an essentially infinite number of snow-related terms by combining roots with modifiers
- Recent research shows Central Siberian Yupik has about 40 distinct snow terms, and Nunavimmiutitut has at least 53
Think about it this way: English speakers have “rain,” “drizzle,” “downpour,” “mist,” “shower,” “sprinkle,” etc. We make distinctions that matter to us. Inuit cultures, living in snow for much of the year, naturally developed a richer vocabulary for the substance that dominates their environment.
The question isn’t really “Do they have more words?” It’s “Does having more words change how they perceive and interact with snow?”
And the honest answer is: probably yes, at least somewhat. When you have a specific word for “snow that’s perfect for building,” you’re more likely to notice that specific snow condition. The word creates a category, and the category shapes attention.
Other Examples Across Languages
Time perception: Hopi (according to Benjamin Whorf, though this is contested) structures time differently than English. English divides time into past, present, and future. Hopi supposedly divides it into “manifested” (past and present) and “manifesting” (future). Does this change how Hopi speakers experience time? Maybe.
Spatial reasoning: Some languages are geocentric (using cardinal directions: “the cup is north of the plate”) while others are egocentric (using relative directions: “the cup is to the left of the plate”). Speakers of geocentric languages have demonstrably better awareness of cardinal directions—they literally can’t function in their language without constantly tracking which way is north.
Color perception: Russian has separate words for light blue (голубой) and dark blue (синий). Russian speakers are measurably faster at distinguishing these shades than English speakers. The language creates a perceptual boundary.
What the Evidence Actually Shows
Modern research suggests:
- Language affects perception speed (Russian speakers are faster at distinguishing blues)
- Language affects spatial reasoning (geocentric language speakers track directions better)
- Language affects memory (you remember things better if your language has categories for them)
- Language affects attention (you notice what your language names)
But language doesn’t create hard cognitive limits. You can learn new concepts. You can think outside your native language’s categories. It’s just harder, slower, less automatic.
Think of language as a set of well-worn paths through a forest. You can bushwhack through the undergrowth to reach places the paths don’t go. But most of the time, you’ll stick to the paths because they’re easier.
The Dark Side: Newspeak and Deliberate Manipulation
George Orwell understood linguistic relativity deeply. In 1984, he imagined its dystopian application: Newspeak, a language deliberately designed to make certain thoughts impossible.
How Newspeak Works
The Party in 1984 is “constantly refining and perfecting Newspeak, with the ultimate goal that no one will be capable of conceptualizing anything that might question the Party’s absolute power.”
Here’s how:
Vocabulary reduction: Remove words for concepts you want to eliminate. No word for “freedom”? Then people can’t think clearly about freedom. They might feel vaguely uncomfortable, but they can’t articulate or organize around the concept.
Compound simplification: Replace “bad” with “ungood.” Replace “excellent” with “doubleplusgood.” Now you’ve eliminated all the gradations and nuances. Good, ungood, plusgood, doubleplusgood. Four words where English has dozens. Fewer distinctions, cruder thinking.
Thought crime through language: Make rebellion literally unspeakable. If you can’t name something, you can’t share it. If you can’t share it, you can’t organize around it. Individual vague dissatisfaction remains individual and vague.
The genius of Newspeak is that it doesn’t need to convince you the Party is right. It just needs to make it harder to articulate why they’re wrong.
Doublethink: The Mental Gymnastics
Alongside Newspeak, Orwell described doublethink: “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.
Doublethink works because of linguistic manipulation. When words lose their fixed meanings, when “freedom” can mean its opposite, when “peace” describes permanent war, the mind loses its ability to reason clearly. Everything becomes slippery.
You can’t build logical arguments when the words keep shifting under you. You can’t spot contradictions when contradiction itself becomes normalized. You can’t think clearly when language is deliberately crafted to prevent clear thinking.
What This Means for How I Think
Building Better Mental Models
Language creates mental models. Better language creates better mental models.
This connects directly to my work on Sleight of Mouth—the idea that language, often unknown to us, creates our mental models and our reality.
The difference is that Sleight of Mouth is about reframing—changing your language to change your experience of reality. This post is about vocabulary—expanding your language to expand what experiences you can have.
Both are about the same core truth: The words you use don’t just describe your thinking. They shape it.