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by kergonath 1486 days ago
It also would not be propagated along with the culture, which is the hypothesis at its core: not that people of one given language are incapable of understanding some concepts, but rather that their cultural bagage tends to bias them and shape their way of thinking (which I would think is obviously true to anyone who’s ever lived in a foreign country or read literature or news articles in a foreign language).
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The constant creation of new words for new things and concepts seems to limit that idea.

Only dead languages are static, otherwise they can all adapt to new ideas as long as their sufficiently useful.

It is not incompatible, the time scales involved are different.
By limit I mean the scope of it’s impact is limited. If new ideas become new words then language isn’t a limitation on idea formation, expression, or spread.

Sure some ideas might spread more easily as say an obvious and catchy campaign slogan, there is a maximum benefit to such advantages. “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” is longer say “No taxation without representation” but number of works doesn’t seem to be a major limitation here. People just encode such ideas into otherwise meaningless slogans like “Promises Kept.” Soon people don’t wonder what “The wage gap” or “Pro life” is referring to.