Thinking without language?

[Paul Sampson]

gregh wrote in message <7DLg4.4926$3b6.23145 at ozemail.com.au>...
> "Paul Sampson" ... wrote in message news:3883471c$1 at runswick.octacon.co.uk...
>> Adrian Ian Skilling wrote in message <85v35b$5nn$1 at trog.dera.gov.uk>...

>>> ... surely its obvious that it is
>>> hard to express a concept or emotion that we don't have a word for. How
>>> could it be any other way !!

>> That's odd. I don't have a word for - and afaik *english* doesn't have a
>> word for - the left testicle of an orang-utan born on any sunday in an
>> odd numbered year of the fifteenth century BCE. So I suppose I'm unable
>> to express such a concept. Oh dear. That's that then. Rats.

> Strange. Looks like you just DID express it. Sometimes it isnt a WORD but an
> amalgamation of them that does the same job.

Now I'm confused. Were you missing *my* irony, or am I now missing *yours*?
Troubling. Very troubling. :)

> .. [T]he emotion "love" is expressed
> as a different thing by different people but we generally accept it to mean
> a common thing but definitive concepts such as you expressed above have no
> grey area.

Oh I don't know though. We'd still have to agree on what was meant by the
tag 'orang-utan', on the wisdom or appropriateness of the application of the
term 'sunday' with reference to a period long before its present connotations
obtain (did the concept of the 'seven day week' even exist then?). So whilst
I imagine the concept of testicle to be reasonably robust over such a period,
I believe there's still some scope for a little smallholding on the old grey
acres. (I feel sure there must be a word for this kind of waffle. Discuss.)