Language, the constrain to free thinking .

When I first decided to write this post, the title I chose was, "Vocabulary, the constrain to thinking" . But as I got to thinking more about it, I found an entirely new perspective.

Lately I have been looking up English words to improve my vocabulary(for reasons I shall come to later). I came across a word , " Agnostic ", meaning " a person who claims that they cannot have true knowledge about the existence of God (but does not deny that God might exist) ". It suddenly hit me, that this was an entirely new idea to me . I had never thought about it, till then. So, our thought process is largely affected by our vocabulary isn't it? It seems almost unimaginable to have ideas with no solid words associated.

Well that is something that gave me a jolt of realization! To exaggerate it a bit one might say " You can't think of something unless you know a word for it " . I know, thats too much of an exaggeration, but, I hope you know what I mean.

As most of the readers of my blog ( if any one at all, except for my faithful friend AJ ), would know my mother tongue is Gujarati. And as far as I know there is no word available in Gujarati with a similar meaning as the word " Agnostic " . And even if there is one, there must be many other words in the English language that do not have corresponding meanings in other languages or vice versa.

It seems that in any language, the entire vocabulary of words depends on the culture of the places origin and development of the language. In a cultures where existence of god is never questioned , it is not likely that the primary language of that culture would have a word similar to the word " Agnostic ". Of course, this is just an example; there could be thousands of such cases .A language might even not have any mention of " god ".

This seems more applicable to abstract ideas, rather than physical objects or an idea directly related to a physical object.

Taking it forward, I reckon we could also say most of our ideologies, believes are based on the language we speak(more importantly, the language we think in) and of course the culture we belong to. Very few of us have the courage to think on their own. Even if one tries, the fact that most of the thought process in average men takes place verbally, is restraining.

The best solution that I can think of at the is to expand your active vocabulary. And as for my favoring the English language, there are a few reasons. One, that it is relatively easy to learn and the availability of numerous resources for learning makes it favorable. Secondly it is probably the most widespread language in the world (not the number of users, but the vast distribution of the speakers), which means more and more ideas and ideologies are constantly gaining recognition in through the language and eventually new words are being accepted as part of the language.

I hope to have my linguist friend to look into the topic in technical detail .