[ajzinsbwbs]

I think you only need language to communicate, it’s not necessary in order to think. Do you agree that a human that grows up in isolation probably won’t develop a language? Would you say such a human isn’t sentient?

I think as highly social beings we often annotate all of our thoughts with the language we could use to communicate them, which could lead us to believe that the thoughts are indistinguishable from the language, but that conclusion seems like an error to me. I’ve also heard some people talk about how they are “visual” or “geometric” thinkers and sometimes think in terms of images and structures without words.

[oehtXRwMkIs]

Assuming Genie the feral child was not born mentally retarded, it may suggest that language is critical for human level intelligence. There's also the theory in anthropolgy which I believe has some evidence that human intelligence exploded with development of more complex language.