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Language is one of the oldest technologies. This is the same technology as any other man-made technology.
It is usually said that in many cases language is insufficient and restricts us in expressing certain phenomena of life (love, beauty, etc.).
Without going into a detailed analysis of the theory of language, I will give a few examples that show the ambiguity and problematicness of the idea of language as a tool for understanding the world, and, importantly, the limitations of this tool.
For example, when a person is asked what it means or what it feels like to be Russian / French/German / etc., they usually say that it is impossible to fully express it in words, and that you need to be one of them to understand it. At first, it may seem that the language is also a limitation here. But in fact, here language is an excess over its object, i.e., what it expresses. The word “Russian” expresses something much more than it really is, so you can only understand what it means to be Russian if you are Russian. In other words, the word “Russian “is not only not a pale, incomplete expression of Russian as such, but even conceals something more than” Russian ” is in reality. Therefore, it is impossible in reality to find and show all the attributes inherent in Russian. The word here, paradoxically, is bigger than reality.
Another remarkable example illustrating this problem is the presence of more than forty words for snow among the Eskimos. The problem is this: Do Eskimos have 40 different words for snow because they see, touch, use, and feel 40 different types of snow (loose, wet, etc.) (Hume's representation of the empirical beginning of epistemology), or do Eskimos distinguish 40 different types of snow because they have 40 different words for snow (Kant's representation of the beginning of epistemology)?
Both concepts certainly play an important role in human cognition of the world. In the first case, empirical contact with a phenomenon in reality gives rise to the concept (hence the word) of this phenomenon. I.e., according to this idea, a person first observes, feels a certain phenomenon, and then only comes up with a word for it.
According to the second view,in order to understand, formulate and explain a phenomenon, the first step is to have a suitable word in stock. For example, a child does not need to touch an open wire to know that it is dangerous. His parents warned him about this. That is, the language enters into the knowledge of the danger of an open wire before physical contact with it.
Human cognition of the world occurs through the synthesis of these two processes. However, the purpose of these examples was to show the problematic nature of abstract and general ideas and arguments about the role of language in cognition of the world.