Does reality create language, or does language create reality? Do we think first and then search for words to express what we think, or do the words available to us influence what we are able to think?
This discussion is related to what is known as linguistic relativity, associated with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. In its strongest form, this perspective would suggest that language determines or limits thought: if a language lacks certain categories, its speakers would have a radically different mental experience.
This deterministic version has been widely challenged. The fact that a language does not have a specific word for something does not mean that its speakers are unable to perceive or understand it. We can recognize a color for which we have no specific name, distinguish sounds that require a description, and understand concepts that our language expresses through several words rather than a single one.
Language does not necessarily determine what we can think, but it may influence what we distinguish, emphasize, and communicate more easily (Evans & Levinson, 2009).
Is language a mirror of reality, a prison that prevents us from seeing it, or a way of organizing it?
A window can be conceptualized as an eye or as an opening for the wind. The history of words offers examples of how languages can preserve ancient ways of conceptualizing things. Consider the word window. In English, it comes from the Old Norse vindauga, literally “wind-eye,” referring to an opening through which air could enter and through which one could look outside. In Russian, we find окно (okno), “window,” historically related to око (oko), “eye.” This etymological relationship is suggestive because it allows us to imagine the window as a kind of eye of the house: an opening through which one looks outward.
This does not mean that a modern English speaker thinks of a window as a “wind-eye,” nor that a modern Russian speaker thinks of it as the eye of the house. Words survive the circumstances that gave rise to them and can preserve associations that are no longer conscious to the people who use them. In this sense, a word can become a small cultural fossil.
Imagine an autumn day. The wind moves the dry leaves of a tree. The leaves rub against one another and produce a soft, continuous, slightly rough sound. In Russian, there is a verb for this: шуршать (shurshat’), used to describe certain soft sounds produced by materials rubbing against one another, such as dry leaves, paper, or grass. Its sound itself has an onomatopoeic quality.
In English, by contrast, we generally have to describe the experience: the leaves rustle, the leaves make a soft rustling sound, or you can hear the leaves moving in the wind. English does have the verb rustle, which comes remarkably close to the Russian example, but its semantic range and historical development are not identical to those of shurshat’. The comparison therefore raises an interesting question: why do languages develop particular words for particular experiences, and why do those words not always correspond exactly across languages?
Why did Russian develop a specific verb for this type of sound, while other languages may express similar experiences differently? What causes an experience to become a word in one language but remain a description in another?
The answer is probably not that Russians consider leaves more important than English speakers. Nor can we conclude, simply from the existence of shurshat’, that Russians perceive the sound differently.
Languages can lexicalize different aspects of experience. A community may develop a word for a distinction that another community expresses through a phrase. This can happen for historical, cultural, phonetic, or grammatical reasons, as well as through the particular evolution of a language.
An English speaker can hear the sound of leaves perfectly well. They can recognize it, describe it, remember it, and even write a poem about it. What differs is not necessarily the perception itself, but the linguistic form available for expressing that experience.
And this brings us back to the original question. If we can experience something before we have a word to name it, then language does not necessarily create the experience. But once we have a word, something changes. We can point to it, repeat it, and share it more easily. We can write a poem about it without having to explain each time exactly what sound we mean.
Wittgenstein (2001) wrote: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.”
From the perspective of Contino’s (2026) spiral theory, reality, experience, interpretation, and language do not form a linear sequence but rather a process of feedback. Reality gives rise to experiences that we interpret and seek to express through language; once those expressions are created, however, language in turn influences how we interpret reality. Each word thus becomes another turn of the spiral.
References
Contino, L. (2026). Communication as a Spiral: Theory and Linguistic Perspectives.
Evans, N., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science.
Wittgenstein, L. (2001). Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Routledge. (Original work published in 1922).