Do we learn to think before we speak, or does language shape our thoughts? Human beings have developed consciousness through the use of language symbols. With this innovation, humans became capable of an awareness of their own mental processes and through that event become amenable to modification and adaption of the very schemata which creates their reality.

Language is more than just a means of communication. It influences our culture and even our thought processes. Some theorists maintain that the peculiarities of a given language do not significantly affect the thinking of those who speak or write in that language, and so the differences between languages are largely accidental or irrelevent to the meaning of the text. Other writers maintain that differences between languages are such that an accurate translation must frequently be unidiomatic in the receptor language, because the idiomatic contructions and usages of the receptor language cannot capture the foreign modes of thought which are inherent in the language of the original text. Different languages use distinctive phonemes, which are the smallest units of sound, as well as describe and name ideas and concepts differently.

In other words, language acts like a polarizing lens on a camera in filtering reality – we see the real world only in the categories of our language. The development of language in persons is thus viewed as a specific, programmed cognitive capacity-an organ that grows in the brain.

The result is that each individual, within some limitations, has the capacity to modify their own reality to make it more satisfying. In modern society, as we become less aware of nonverbal or intuitive sensations, we increasingly use words or symbolic language in our thought processes.

Do we learn to think before we speak, or does language shape our thoughts? New experiments with five-month-olds favor the conclusion that thought comes first. Do we learn to think before we speak, or does language shape our thoughts? New experiments with five-month-olds favor the conclusion that thought comes first “Infants are born with a language-independent system for thinking about objects,” says Elizabeth Spelke, a professor of psychology at Harvard “These concepts give meaning to the words they learn later “. It seems to me that the opinion that thought is independent of language has been adopted of late by many linguists only as a theoretical axiom, by those who wish it to be so, without any proof, and that the writers who present this idea as if it were a scientific finding are themselves guilty of a fallacy, because they are treating a presumptive axiom of a school as if it were a conclusion.

The author of this article runs the website languageofthought.com about books about Cognition and Psychosemantics.