[pebblexe]

What's the difference between 'determines' and 'influences'? I mean isn't that just a sliding scale? If a concept is incredibly difficult to formulate in a given language, could it not be said that the language has limited my thinking?

[Jtsummers]

Sapir-Whorf is really a family of hypotheses, not a singular one. The differences being degree of influence from language on thought, and amount of feedback based on culture/experience. If my language lacks the concept for an ocean or sea, but I live next to one, clearly we'll find a way to express "seaward" and other related concepts, though the language may require more complex circumlocutions or inventing/borrowing words. But returning that concept and word to my inland relatives may be nigh impossible, because their experience (not just language) doesn't allow them to consider such a thing as even real. They may accept the word, but not the reality of it until witnessing it.

And, yes, if a concept is hard to express in a language that it, potentially, limits your thinking. If all thought is just language, then it may even bar thinking of concepts. But that gets into another debate, is language the key to thought, or is language an expression of thought. We can all probably conceive of things or maybe even have witnessed things which we are unable to articulate in many or all existing languages, but language expands or we adopt new languages (such as mathematics and calculus in particular to express physics). The precise motion of the planets could be explained in plain English, through complex circumlocutions. But calculus and its derived languages allow us to express this concept far more easily (even if just the English translation of the formulae and expressions, and not the precise notations used by physicists and mathematicians).

[awinter-py]

How do you distinguish between the case where your language is limiting your thinking vs the case where your thinking is limiting your use of the language?

If an individual can't express a concept, how can you be sure they 'possess' that concept?

(answer might be found in bilinguals. There was an early saint from capadoccia who was grateful some of the more sophisticated greek heresies couldn't even be expressed in his language).

[vidarh]

It is a sliding scale, and that's the problem. Without specifying exactly what you mean, it's impossible to say if we agree with your interpretation or not.