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The idea that language limits or constrains the way people think (the stronger side of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) is now largely discredited by the majority of linguists.

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I speak 8 languages from many separate groups (Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Sino-Tibetan, Japanese), and my impression is that languages truly put constraints on one's ability to formulate thoughts. Of course, mentalese, the unspoken one, is different, independent, but it's rare people retain it to their older age and by then prevailing cultural/linguistic currents shape their thoughts. Sapir-Whorf might be discredited as general hypothesis, but it might correspond to 95% practical state statistically-wise.

Would you please give some examples where you've found "that languages truly put constraints on one's ability to formulate thoughts"?

I don't know what he is referring to. But one interesting things is that there is a language where you can express that someone is doing something without including the time when he is doing it. This is not possible in the languages I know of (De/En/Fr).

I can imagine that this ability makes different thoughts possible.

When looking at programming languages, it is indeed the case that your "lingua franca" limits the imagination of what software architectures are possible to solve the problem.

For a really eccentric example see:

https://aymara.org/biblio/html/igr/igr3.html

Or just use of 無 in (ancient) Chinese for a simple example (in the sense of "unasking the question").

Yet we have a wide variety of programming languages, and switch between them as the need arises for a better fit to the problem domain we're working in. With the wide variety of things like number systems in different languages, wouldn't it make sense that using some languages might be better for mathematical communication, and others maybe not offer the precision required to communicate everything necessary? It would make sense to me if some languages were better for talking about navigation, or weather than others. Or some were better with numbers, or parts of anatomy, etc.

That's a softer form of it which is fairly obviously true; a language with no words for weather will obviously limit discussion of the weather forecast. That's a bit different to whether it limits your ability to think about those things though.

Do you speak more than one natural language? I am an anglophone but took most of my schooling in french. Though I work in english now, I can remember distinctly 'thinking in English' and 'thinking in French' and depending on the problem I was wrestling with, the constructs of the language you frame your thinking in absolutely can give you an advantage or disadvantage.

I always thought it was remarkable how much human thought was imprisoned by language, and it really makes me wonder what a human 'without language' would be capable of thinking.

One other than my native tongue, but not nearly fluently.

To clarify, I don't disagree with what you're saying; I'm not a linguist but from what I know there certainly seems to be some truth in the weaker forms of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that language affects how you think), but the strong form (that language controls how you think) seems fairly well disproven these days.

And now for the forecast of the local atmosphere state: In the morning, the yellow ball in the sky will be hidden by areas of water aerosol. Around noon, water will fall from the sky.

I've long thought it a real possibility that people are constrained (in certain areas) by their language.

No expert and not disagreeing with you, but I'd be very interested to read any literature you can recommend on the subject.

For an introduction see:

Linguistic relativity

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

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