How language shapes what people think about

I've noticed that language is really good about conveying some ideas and really lousy at others. Some are surprising, like opposites. For example, love and caring can have a wide range of meanings, but hate and neglect are fairly specific. Concrete everyday items and actions are easily conveyed but spiritual matters and empathic abilities have terms that are vague or loaded with connotations that make them poor at best. Even the term empathic abilities is horrid at describing what it attempts to as it also has so many older more common meanings in the english language. This causes confusion.

What are some of the other areas where you've found language is horrid in conveying what you wish to express? I can think of many more. Also have you noticed that language encourages attention to some areas while ignoring others?

I think what I notice even more is the difficulty to put a concept into words. What I usually end up doing is using an analogy to get my point across. I've pretty much felt for quite a long time now that words just are not adequate in attempting to get concepts across. Maybe part of that has to do with the English language being such a conglomeration of other languages. For instance there are many words that are derived from Latin, which of course is a language no longer used, except for religion and botany labels and such. Words develop according to where the specific people/culture lives. Take the Eskimos, who have a lot of different words for snow. They do this because there are different types of snow and living where they do, this is some critical information. For the most part, people in this country pretty much use the same words over and over again. Hmm, no wonder we have communication problems.

I find it difficult to use language to get my exact points across. The picture with some things is so big that I often find that words don't come close to describing them accurately.

Yes, if those concepts are not covered in the language, analogy is about all that can be done to approximate it. I know that experience quite well. It doesn't matter that my vocabulary is far more vast than the average person's at all. The words are just not there, in normal usage.

Yes! I have great difficulties getting things across! I too love analogies! Since I am extremely visual, I often visualize a lot of ways and analogy or 'stories' tend to work well for me in expression.
Feelings can be very hard to express in concrete terms...but tend to work much better for me in poems or wandering thought...
Interesting...
b.d.

Found this while googling around mc..thought it was interesting to place here.....hope you dont mind...

I'd heard of this before. This is another communication hurdle; in addition to the limits of the language itself, how we communicate adds a whole other level of complexity to cause miscommunication with.