Why the worst idea in linguistics won't die, at Dead Language Society. I have written about both Sapir and Whorf over the years - in exactly the same posts. It is the very cool idea that the language we speak constrains our speech, so that having a different native language, or learning a new one, drives how we think. All those stories of "the German word Schadenfreude does not exist in English, and it is untranslatable." No, it's not. There is no one-to-one translation for the word, but it is easily translated if you allow phrases and multiple adjectives. This is why your pastor can take apart a word in the NT from Greek and explain it to you, even though it is different from English - because it can be translated. At an overwhelming level, any thought that can be expressed in one language can be expressed in another. That's going to be tough when one society has very different technology from another and it will take time, but it can be done.
I knew the essay was going to include the very slight exceptions, such as Russian light blue and dark blue, and even though it is after the paywall jump, I am going to bet that the Amazonian language Piraha and its lack of numbers will be brought forth as a stronger exception. But really, you aren't ever going to meet any speakers of Piraha, so there's no need to know it. Linguistic Relativism isn't true, even though we would like it to be.
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“Darmok” is a great Star Trek episode about the difficulties but ultimate success of communicating with an alien species that speaks only in allegories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok
The late 19th and 20th centuries saw an explosion in what is called "Philosophy of Language," i.e., a deep investigation into how language actually works to do things like refer to objects in the world, or in the mind. This idea of the language you speak shaping the way you think, however, was not treated as a serious consideration in that long investigation. It's not that nobody thought of it; it's just that nobody on reflection considered it a serious problem.
How you create a direct reference, by contrast, is a real problem. It's easy ("THAT thing THERE"), but exactly how it works was the subject of a lot of pondering.
Miscellaneous reactions:
"the German word Schadenfreude does not exist in English, and it is untranslatable."
Amusing, considering how much currency the word now has in American politics.
Science fiction author Jack Vance wrote a novel cranking Sapir-Worf up to eleven, called The Languages of Pao, in which one planet takes over another by language manipulation.
Another take on the separation of language and thought: Consider two discussions of, say, the Pythagorean Theorem, one in English, one in Russian, using wholly different diagrams. And yet they are both talking about the same thing. Clearly, this thing is not just a linguistic entity, and it sure isn't physical. This non-linguistic essence is, I once put it in a philosophical conversation, is what Thomistic angels' thoughts on the subject would be.
In The Book of the New Sun (Shadow of the Torturer and sequels) Gene Wolfe played with the concepts a bit as he had a prisoner tell a story to the rest using nothing but approved Party slogans.
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