One of the oldest questions in the study of language involves how it influences our thought. One of the most controversial answers comes from Benjamin Whorf, the student of renowned anthropologist Edward Sapir: language not only influences thought; language determines thought -- thought cannot exist without language. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, at least in its strongest form, has been discarded by mainstream psychologists. After all, it's not difficult to come up with many examples of thought that do not involve language, such as mentally rotating an object or learning how to juggle (think about it: by the time you verbalized the tiny adjustments necessary to juggle successfully, the floor would be littered with juggling balls). But a weaker form of the hypothesis has yet to be disproved: the idea that the available linguistic expression does to a certain extent constrain our thoughts.

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