My understanding is that language is the accumulated wisdom of a group of people. Out of a seemingly limitless amount of sensory experiences, language picks out those things which are repetitive in the experience of the people developing the language and that they have found useful to attend to in consciousness. It's not surprising that Eskimos have seventy-some words for snow in terms of where they live and the kinds of tasks they have to perform. For them, survival is an issue closely connected with snow, and therefore they make very fine distinctions. Skiers also have many different words for different kinds of snow.
You all know very, very little about how you are able to generate language. Somehow or other as you speak you are able to create complex pieces of syntax, and I know that you don't make any conscious decisions. You don't go "Well, I'm going to speak, and first I'll put a noun in the sentence, then I'll throw an adjective in, then a verb, and maybe a little adverb at the end, just to spruce things up a bit." Yet you speak a language that has grammar and syntax— rules that are as explicit as mathematical functions.
As Aldous Huxley says in his book, The Doors of Perception, when you learn a language, you are an inheritor of the wisdom of the people who have gone before you. You are also a victim in this sense: of that infinite set of experiences you could have had, certain ones are given names, labeled with words, and thereby are emphasized and attract your attention. Equally valid—possibly even more dramatic and useful—experiences at the sensory level which are unlabeled, typically don't intrude into your consciousness.
Go on then, invent a new word for something you've experienced. Chances are - someone's already been there and named it and therefore, you experience it. If there is no word for it, can you feel it?
