[sowbug]

I've studied three foreign languages (four if you count a failed Toki Pona attempt a while ago), and I find it neat to discover a new grammatical concept, such as subjunctive in Spanish, which exists but only barely in English, or to realize that a language is missing an English construct, such as Mandarin, which doesn't have anywhere near as many gendered words as Germanic or Romance languages. As with computer languages, it's rarely the case that something is inexpressible, but it might have to be done differently compared to another language. I don't completely buy into the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but I do believe that cultural differences are partly attributable to grammar and vocabulary.

[lproven]

As I understand it, neither Mandarin nor Irish have words that directly mean "yes" and "no."

Then again, half a millennium ago, English had 4 such words: 2 for yes, 2 for no. (Sir Thomas More tried to explain this circa 400 years ago, and even he got it wrong.)

Norwegian and Czech, both of which I speak very badly, preserve two forms of "yes" and I cannot keep them straight.

[sowbug]

Learning Mandarin does make me yearn for the simplicity of English "yes" and "no." But I have to admit, each word in Mandarin works a lot harder than it does in English, so you can often say a heck of a lot in just one or two syllables.