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comment by veen
veen  ·  3774 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: If We Have No Word for a Colour, Can We See It? Researchers Say No.

    I think when we have names for concepts, we are much easier able to think about them.

A lot of people underestimate the way language shapes how you think. Especially if you've never mastered a second language. I have a couple of friends who are at a similar level of English as I and we often use English words in Dutch sentences, simply because it encapsulates the message we're trying to communicate better. There's no Dutch verb that has the same meaning and association that cringe has. Or something like l'espirit de l'escalier.

Creating words can also help to verbalize an issue or a feeling. It's a theme in (Dutch) urban planning to give every phenomenon or idea its own word, a practice which leads to silly words like verpaarding (lit. horsification), used pejoratively to describe the increased amount of horses in the rural landscape.