[sramsay]

It is unsurprising only if you fail to consider the implications of it being true (in the strong sense).

Some languages have extremely complex ways of indicating tense (making a grammatical distinction between, for example, past events that occurred and then ceased, versus past events that are still ongoing). Some have retained complex grammars for expressing wishes (the optative mood, for example). Other languages have far fewer grammatical ways of expressing tense and mood. Tenses in Mandarin Chinese are often "optional" in a sentence, for example, and in general the mood system of English is a lot simpler than it is in, say, ancient Greek. Ancient Hebrew, strictly speaking, does not have past, present, and future tenses at all (but instead combines context with perfective and imperfective aspects).

Now here's the possibly dangerous leap. "The Chinese think differently about time" (or are less concerned about it). "The ancient Hebrews were very focused on the present and rather feckless about the future." "German and Greek are the only languages worthy of philosophy" (a direct quote from Heidegger). "There are certain emotions in Hopi that cannot be expressed in English." "People speaking a creole are less capable of nuanced rational thought." You can probably see where this is going . . .

[PavlikPaja]

One of the more interesting grammatical features is evidentiallity, which requires you to indicate how you know what you say, e.g. if you saw it, deduced it, or if it's something you were told.

Another is grammatical honorifics, which use suffixes to indicate your relationship with the speaker and sometimes also with who, or even what you are talking about.