History Main / LanguageEqualsThought

** The Troll language is also [[http://www.homestuck.com/story/2392 much more complex]] than the human language when it comes to the subject of romance. Human culture would, for example, have difficulty diagnosing kismesis[[note]]Described in the comic as as "an especilly potent arch-rivalry", you might consider it a form of hatesex, but stretched out into a relationship with the same level of investment and intensity as a marriage relationships but approached from the opposite direction.[[/note]] -- but would also have trouble with moirallegiance[[note]]Trolls being extremely volatile as a species, they will have an attraction to a "more even-tempered" troll, who will attempt to pacify them and keep them calm. Usually this leads to the pair complimenting each other in temperament and emotions, leading to both becoming better people, though it's also shown that sometimes a moirallegiance will break apart as they stop being a good match for each other.[[/note]], and would use less positive words for it, likening it more to codependence. Troll culture, on the other hand, has no term for homosexuality, since troll reproduction works so that any pairing can produce progeny (it's complex, and it involves birth by proxy). This disconnect was only [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004528 recently learned]]:

** Karkat also claims that Trolls [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003807 have no word for "dare."]]

* {{Discussed|Trope}} in ''Manga/OokuTheInnerChambers'' -- Taneatsu's first encounter with English and its simplicity (compared to Danish and Japanese) leaves him wondering if it's the language which shaped the people or vice versa.

* The historical novel ''Caribbean'' by Creator/JamesAMichener has a Rastafari preaching that people should avoid saying "dead" or "sin" if these sounds are part of words which have nothing to do with death or sins. Instead of "dedicate", say "i-dicate", or "i-new" instead of "sinew".

* The historical novel ''Caribbean'' by Creator/JamesMichener has a Rastafari preaching that people should avoid saying "dead" or "sin" if these sounds are part of words which have nothing to do with death or sins. Instead of "dedicate", say "i-dicate", or "i-new" instead of "sinew".

* Inverted with the Wiki/SCPFoundation's [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-444 SCP-444]]: A memetic virus which, once heard by a human, starts to alter their brain and simplify the language. The more they speak it, the more docile and less individualized they become. It's virulent ''and'' hereditary in infants -- the Foundation considers it a precursor to an alien invasion.

-->'''Sara:''' There aren't words for it. There can't be. A language is built on the experience of its speakers. It's like [[LanguageEqualsThought how the eskimoes have a hundred words for snow]]. A language couldn't have words to describe how stupid this is. Its speakers would had to have been [[TooDumbToLive too stupid to survive]] long enough to develop enough forebrain to have a language in the first place!

Regardless, this makes for an interesting device in fiction, particularly for characterizing a PlanetOfHats through their vocabulary (grammatical structures can also indicate a certain way of thought, but vocabulary is easier to write about without a comprehensive background in linguistics). For instance, one can characterize a [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy very warlike race]] by saying that they have no words for "peace" or "surrender" but plenty for "war" and "hate"; conversely, the inhabitants of a pacifist MarySuetopia may lack a word for "war" or "hate" but many for "love".

** At one point Worf mentions that he and Martok had a moment of Tova'dok between them. Worf says there is no equivilent word in English, but he is easily able to define it as "a moment of clarity between two warriors on a field of battle."

This sort of thing also shows up frequently on lists of LittleKnownFacts, the most common version being "[[EskimoLand the Eskimos]] have [some large number] words for snow" ([[UrbanLegend Not exactly]].[[note]][[http://web.archive.org/web/20111008220614/http://people.ucalgary.ca/~kmuldrew/cryo_course/snow_words.html English may actually have more words for frozen water]].[[/note]] Inuktitut has two base words for snow, but it is a polysynthetic language, meaning new words are more easily created at need from existing ones). On the other hand, Americans do have a large number of words for "being drunk."[[note]]However, many of these words are regional slang words, and may not be recognized as meaning "being drunk". For example, an English-speaking person from outside the United States might interpret the phrase "totally wasted" not as "very drunk", but rather "thin and starving", or more literally as "wasting his life." Meanwhile, Americans might think "totally pissed" means "extremely angry" rather than "really drunk", like the British do.[[/note]]

Also note that most instances of this trope implicitly equate languages with their words, which is a failure to understand even basic linguistics. Linguists see languages as '''grammars''', systems of rules according to which people can form complex expressions (sentences, phrases, words) out of smaller, discrete parts (morphemes, phonemes). The more solid versions of the linguistic relativity are about how ''grammar'', not ''words'', influence thought. People consciously [[{{Neologism}} invent new words]] or adopt foreign ones all the time, in an offhand manner without any effort, which in RealLife enormously weakens the "they can't think X because they have no word for X" trope. People, on the other hand, rarely consciously invent new grammatical tenses for their language, much less invent new obligatory grammatical rules for things like [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality evidentiality]].

* In the ''Film/{{Transformers}}'' fanfic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4144511/1/Indefinite-Objects Indefinite Objects]]'', Maggie discovers that the Transformers lack puns in their language. While talking about this with Glenn, she explains that the Autobots might have a completely logical language-which means that they can only distinguish a value between what is true and what is false, and don't have standards for things like beauty and freedom. [[spoiler: This leads them to theorize they may not be thinking beings, but little more than spy drones with Chinese rooms in them, feeding them the correct information to ape sentience]].

* ''Film/{{Arrival}}'': This concept is brought up offhandedly at the beginning while trying to translate the aliens' StarfishLanguage and understand how they think. [[spoiler: Learning their language, which puts a heavy emphasis on time, allows humans to experience MentalTimeTravel.]]
* As originally conceived, the Klingon language in ''Franchise/StarTrek'' had no separate verb for "to be" -- Klingons having no need for a concept that refers to passive existence[[note]]A copula, in linguistic terms, as in "the grass is green".[[/note]]. Then some writer decided the Klingons needed to quote ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' in ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry''.[[note]][[InTheOriginalKlingon and claim he was one of theirs]] as a nod to the original conception of the Klingons as stand-ins for the USSR[[/note]] They tried using the verb "to exist" but Creator/ChristopherPlummer didn't like how it sounded, so in the final film they use "''taH''", "to continue or endure"[[note]]Due to linguistic drift, this is actually a much better translation than "to be."[[/note]]. In 1995 the Klingon Language Institute published an entire translation of ''Hamlet'' into Klingonese with many such substitutions (the entire Klingon vocabulary being a total of 3,000 words, many of which are SpaceOpera terms useless for Shakespeare).

* ''Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse'':

** It is stated in [[Series/GameOfThrones the TV series]] that the Dothraki also have ten different words for "horse". To be fair, [[http://www.macmillandictionary.com/thesaurus-category/british/types-of-horse-or-pony English has way more than that]].

* In the Literature/CiaphasCain book ''The Traitor's Hand'', the residents of the TidallyLockedPlanet Adumbria (who all live on the terminator line) have thirty-seven different dialect words for varying shades of twilight. The popular history of the Chaos incursion Cain's regiment dealt with is titled "Sablist[[note]]almost complete darkness with one last glimmer of light still visible[[/note]] in Skitterfall[[note]]the light level at the planet's capital, also the name of the capital itself[[/note]]". To Adumbrians this is a witty play on words, but it just annoys off-planet readers.

** An example that was truer to the hypothesis involved a treaty between the Federation and a more advanced species, the Sheliak. Said species found human languages to be so crude that they required an immense document to articulate the terms of the treaty. No-one in the Federation was able to translate their language ''at all''. (For a bit of FreezeFrameBonus, the prop-makers included [[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Treaty_of_Armens#Selected_excerpts a bunch of blatant jokes in the shown text of the treaty]], which didn't become visible until the HD update.)

** Karkat also claims that Trolls [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003807 have no word for "dare"]].

* In ''WebComic/SluggyFreelance'', the inhabitants of [[SugarBowl the Dimension of Lame]] normally have extremely wonderful days but sometimes have to tolerate a rather nice day to appreciate how wonderful the other days are. As a result, "rather nice" is about the worst descriptor they can apply to a state of affairs, even when they are invaded by the LegionsOfHell. After a while, one of them does come to the realisation that "This isn't even hardly nice!"

* Tylansian in ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'' uses the same words for "truth teller" and "complaining child" while the word for "liar" also means "successful man". It has often been stated as a cause for their ruling class' ChronicBackstabbingDisorder and Tylansia's general [[MedievalStasis stagnation]] ([[http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/483ae5827604f and ludicrous propaganda films that are strangely popular in the civilized galaxy]])

* WebVideo/TheAnimeMan discusses this in his video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASgsMDz17SE "Why My "Personality" Changes When Speaking Japanese"]]. He's fluent in both English and Japanese and usually laces his English videos with a lot of sarcasm, but fans noticed that this disappeared when he did videos or segments in Japanese and were wondering if he was doing it deliberately. After thinking about it, he realized that sarcasm as it's understood in English is just about impossible to do in Japanese.
* ''Website/NotAlwaysRight'' has [[https://notalwaysright.com/full-definition-jacket/126068/ this story]] of someone from Washington moving to Arizona, working at a clothing store, and discovering that the people in the latter consider ''any'' item of cold-weather clothing a "jacket", as opposed to a cardigan, coat, windbreaker, parka...

** In the ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' pilot, Hoshi informs Captain Archer that she doesn't think the Klingons have a word for "Thank you", and that he "didn't want to know" the actual phrase he had taken for gratitude. (This is either [[MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels Hoshi's mistake]] or [[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign the episode's writers']]: ''The Klingon Dictionary'' actually does include a verb for "to thank", ''[=tlho'=]'', though this is indeed not what the Klingon Chancellor said.)

* ''ComicBook/TheTransformersIDW'': Megatron explains to Optimus Prime that his end goal is to create a world so thoroughly controlled and structured that the very idea of change or rebellion will be a thing of the past, that he will remove his ArmCannon and finally end his war until no one but himself recognizes why the act is significant.

** actually the elvish languages do have words for what is termed ''magic'' in the books. It's just that they use distinct words to refer to the things which Frodo calls magic. This is because they have far more understanding of how this stuff actually works. Gandalf and Saruman are called "wizards" in the book, but the actual name for their Order is ''Istari'': the knowledgeable ones. In general derivatives of the verb ''ista'' can be used for good "magic", though it properly refers mostly to highly advanced technology or superhuman skills. Things like Elrond's ability to cure the Morgul curse are genuine magic though, and these things are more properly termed "blessings", ''gaerain'' or ''balain'' in Sindarin Elvish. [[spoiler: This is an inherited divine power. He gets it from his grandmother Melian, and Aragorn also has it. They have supernaturally graceful movements and sweet voices which people find comforting, trustworthy and inspiring.]]

* {{Discussed|Trope}} in ''Manga/{{Ooku}}'' -- Taneatsu's first encounter with English and its simplicity (compared to Danish and Japanese) leaves him wondering if it's the language which shaped the people or vice versa.

* Creator/CJCherryh's ''Literature/{{Foreigner}}'' sequence is this trope in spades. The Atevi have a language with a numerical basis and have the idea of 'felicitous numbers', so every sentence has to be constructed to reflect not only the actual numbers of people you are talking to, but amended so as not to insult. This makes the introduction of computers etc exciting, since some Atevi think they are being cursed by infelicitous numbers. They also have [[InhumanEmotion a different emotional structure]], stated to be hardwired biology -- they have no exact word for 'friend', but it is a lot more complicated than that. The biggest problem is that they [[RubberForeheadAliens so nearly look like humans]], and a big part of the issue is that humans still think that one day [[HumanityIsInfectious they'll 'get' human concepts and loosen up]]. Despite the fact that this precise misunderstanding nearly led to an extinction event once before...

* ''Literature/InTheCourtsOfTheCrimsonKings'': {{Discussed}} The Martians don't have separate words for "pirate" and "police officer" or "ruler" and "tyrant". They all fall under the broad heading of '''coercives''' which anyone can employ ''fun''.

* This trope is {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in Larry Gonick's ''ComicBook/TheCartoonHistoryOfTheUniverse'', after it's mentioned that the Romans decimated (i.e., killed every tenth person -- though in actual Roman times this was reserved for executing deserters, but RuleOfFunny reigns in this case) Athens:

* {{Subverted|Trope}} in ''ComicBook/JLA1997'', in one issue of Creator/GrantMorrison's run. {{Mad scientist}}s T.O. Morrow and Dr. Ivo decide to find out which one of them is the better scientist by creating an android super-hero named Tomorrow Woman to invade the League and then destroy it. Morrow (in charge of the brain while Ivo was in charge of the body) deliberately leaves the word "freedom" out of her vocabulary. Despite this, when the time for her to destroy the JLA, she defies her very programming, making a HeroicSacrifice to save the other members of the JLA. When Superman asks her remains why she did that in the last seconds of her activation, she says [[IDieFree "word not present in vocabulary"]]. Showing his true character as a scientist (if a mad one) T.O. Morrow was so thrilled by his creation's transcendence of her programming that he didn't mind being arrested (though it's also likely that he's just happy that he "won" the dispute.)
* Creator/GrantMorrison also uses this a number of times in ''ComicBook/TheInvisibles''. As an example, Key 17 is a drug that causes people to hallucinate whatever a word is whenever they read it. For instance, reading the word "dad" will cause a hallucination of your father to show up.
* In Creator/AlanMoore's classic ''ComicBook/GreenLantern'' story "In Blackest Night", GL Katma Tui traveled through a starless expanse of space called the Obsidian Wastes to seek out a native on a planet in that region as a recruit for the Green Lantern Corps. The alien she discovered, Rot Lop Fan, is of a species that, due to there being no light in this sector of space, evolved without eyes. As a result, when Katma attempted to communicate with Fan her ring couldn't translate any words pertaining to vision, light or color, such as 'green', 'lantern', 'ray' or 'sight'. She got around this by retooling Rot's ring to respond to sound instead of color, and naming him "F-Sharp Bell".
* In the Creator/WarrenEllis comic ''ComicBook/{{Ocean}}'', some scientists find alien life forms in suspended animation under the frozen ocean of Europa (one of Jupiter's moons). One of the scientists is trying to figure out their language before an automatic program wakes them up... and when he does, he finds that they have thousands of words for "[[OhCrap murder]]".
* In ''ComicBook/AstonishingXMen'', during the X-Men's trip to the Breakworld, their host Dafi at one point mentions that [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy her people]] have no word for "hospital", because the concepts of mercy and compassion are entirely foreign to them.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Elfquest}}'', the wolfriders do not require words for things they can take for granted. It was a very hard [[spoiler:five hundred]] years for Cutter to learn the word for "peace (of mind)".
* In ''ComicBook/TheTransformersIDW'', Megatron explains to Optimus Prime that his end goal is to create a world so thoroughly controlled and structured that the very idea of change or rebellion will be a thing of the past, that he will remove his ArmCannon and finally end his war until no one but himself recognizes why the act is significant.

** The ''Literature/NewJediOrder'' series has a bioengineered creature used by the [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Yuuzhan Vong invaders]] that seems to be a ShoutOut to ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' -- the tizoworm, a little wriggly thing one places in one's ear that [[TranslatorMicrobes translates for one]]. However, bred as it was by [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Yuuzhan Vong]], it doesn't really have a word for "peace".
** In ''Literature/OutboundFlight'', Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo tells Jorj Car'das that he's known among his people, the Chiss, for... [[MilitaryMaverick unusual tactics]]. The Chiss are {{Martial Pacifist}}s and isolationists; they ''never'' instigate a fight. Thrawn ''does'' instigate fights, against peoples that he thinks are a great enough future danger to the Chiss, and against peoples who might never threaten the Chiss but who ''are'' threatening the weaker cultures just outside of Chiss space. Thrawn seems mildly surprised when Car'das tells him that he's talking about making preemptive strikes, which is a new phrase to him, and tells the human that it's good to know that he's not the only one to consider the morality of striking first. (In ''Outbound Flight'''s sequel ''Survivor's Quest'', we learn that despite this, the Chiss military actually makes a veritable art form out of [[OutGambitted tricking the other guy into striking first]], suggesting Thrawn simply wanted to cut a lot of BS out of the process.)
** In ''Literature/LegacyOfTheForce: Revelation'', Baltan Carid states that the [[{{Conlang}} Mandalorian language]] has no word for "hero" -- not because they have no concept of heroism, but because they take it for granted. The closest they come is the insult "hut'uun", which means "one who is not a hero". The article does claim "hero" means "prepared to die for your family and friends, or what you hold dear," which has [[CreatorProvincialism historically been most cultures]]' idea of [[HumansAreWarriors "dignified behavior"]], not "hero" (which tends to involve, as mentioned in the formula of many military honors, "above and beyond"). ''Mando'a'' as set down by the ''Literature/RepublicCommandoSeries'' also does not have gendered pronouns or make any difference between "friend" and "sibling." If you've seen enough battles with a Mando, you might as well be his brother. The culture also has a proverb that translates to "family is more than blood".

** In ''Literature/TalesFromJabbasPalace'', C-3PO explains that because Hutts are able to consume most any substance with no ill effect there are no Huttese words for "poison". "Fierfek", the Huttese word most other races assume to mean poison, is actually slang for "hex".

* ''Literature/GenocidalOrgan'' is about the hunt for an American linguistics expert called John Paul, who has discovered a '[[BrownNote language of genocide]]' and is using it to [[HatePlague start ethnic conflicts]] in Third World countries. Linguistic relativity being discredited is brought up in a JustBetweenYouAndMe discussion between the protagonist and John Paul.

* ''Literature/InTheCourtsOfTheCrimsonKings'': The Martians don't have separate words for "pirate" and "police officer" or "ruler" and "tyrant".

* In the ''Literature/NantucketTrilogy'', Swindapa Kurlelo is a brilliant mathematician and astronomer, but because of the way her people's language works (including the tendency for numeral words to also express ideas), her attempts to share her knowledge with English-speakers often results in her coming off as a CloudCuckoolander.

* Discussed trope in ''Manga/{{Ooku}}''--Taneatsu's first encounter with English and its simplicity (compared to Danish and Japanese) leaves him wondering if it's the language which shaped the people or vice versa.

* This trope is lampshaded in Larry Gonick's ''ComicBook/TheCartoonHistoryOfTheUniverse'', after it's mentioned that the Romans decimated (i.e., killed every tenth person -- though in actual Roman times this was reserved for executing deserters, but RuleOfFunny reigns in this case) Athens:

* Subverted in [[ComicBook/JusticeLeagueofAmerica JLA]], in one issue of Creator/GrantMorrison's run. [[MadScientist Mad scientists]] T.O. Morrow and Dr. Ivo decide to find out which one of them is the better scientist by creating an android super-hero named Tomorrow Woman to invade the League and then destroy it. Morrow (in charge of the brain while Ivo was in charge of the body) deliberately leaves the word "freedom" out of her vocabulary. Despite this, when the time for her to destroy the JLA, she defies her very programming, making a HeroicSacrifice to save the other members of the JLA. When Superman asks her remains why she did that in the last seconds of her activation, she says [[IDieFree "word not present in vocabulary"]]. Showing his true character as a scientist (if a mad one) T.O. Morrow was so thrilled by his creation's transcendence of her programming that he didn't mind being arrested (though it's also likely that he's just happy that he "won" the dispute.)
* Morrison also uses this a number of times in ''ComicBook/TheInvisibles''. As an example, Key 17 is a drug that causes people to hallucinate whatever a word is whenever they read it. For instance, reading the word "dad" will cause a hallucination of your father to show up.

* In the Creator/WarrenEllis comic ''Comicbook/{{Ocean}}'', some scientists find alien life forms in suspended animation under the frozen ocean of Europa (one of Jupiter's moons). One of the scientists is trying to figure out their language before an automatic program wakes them up... and when he does, he finds that they have thousands of words for "[[OhCrap murder]]."
* In ''ComicBook/AstonishingXMen'', during the X-Men's trip to the Breakworld, their host Dafi at one point mentions that her people have no word for "hospital", because the concepts of mercy and compassion are entirely foreign to them.
* In ComicBook/{{Elfquest}}, the wolfriders do not require words for things they can take for granted. It was a very hard [[spoiler:five hundred]] years for Cutter to learn the word for "peace (of mind)".

* ''FanFic/TheBasaltCityChronicles'': a race known as the Deltharians have no word for sound. This is because around 98% of the population has a genetic condition that renders them entirely deaf.
* Discussed in the ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' fanfic ''Destiny's Pawn.'' Kairi (the mind-wiped Revan) had been given a new identity as a linguist. Even Zhar is a little baffled by why she would rather use conventional language study rather than relying on the Force. And Kairi is frustrated by the Jedi Masters' lazy assumptions about Mandalorians partly because of her association with Canderous and partly because they haven't a single document in the Mandalorian language in the archives: "Language tells you how a culture thinks. Learn it, and you learn them."

* The ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'' fic ''Fanfic/RealityIsFluid'' at one point has a [[LizardFolk Saurian]] ensign on the USS ''Bajor''[='s=] bridge crew struggling to explain to her mammalian crewmates what color something is when you can see ultraviolet light. Federation Standard having been created by species with humanlike visual spectra, it has literally no equivalent words for the [[spoiler:Undine ships']] colors as she perceives them.
* In the DC Universe fanfic ''Fanfic/{{Cranes}}'', the Gotham City nickname for metahumans is "Deader-Thans". This is because Gotham City is the haunt of Batman, who is notorious for his vehement FantasticRacism against meta-humans, to the point the city is considered one of the worst places to be in the entirety of America if you're a meta.

* In ''Fanfic/TheWeaverOption'' the Necrons of the Throne of Oblivion issue the ultimatum "Surrender and die" when engaging in combat. The Ork Brukk-Brukk finds this confusing as Orks have no concept of "surrender", ultimately concluding it must a cultural thing.

* In ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'' [[CommonTongue Galach]] has different words for poison in food (chaumas) or drink (chaumurky), which probably says something about the [[DecadentCourt Houses]]. While the desert-dwelling Fremen have different words for different types of sand, of course.
* In ''Literature/{{Anthem}}'' by Creator/AynRand, the collectivist society has removed the first-person singular pronoun "I" from language and made "ego" into a forbidden word, [[CriticalResearchFailure totally ignoring the fact]] that [[IndoEuropeanAlienLanguage some languages don't have a separate grammatical category "pronoun"]] ''at all''. (Though considering that Rand thought the Amerindians deserved to be wiped out for not having an industrial capitalist economy, she probably wouldn’t have cared.)
* In the Literature/GreenSkyTrilogy, the Kindar do not even have any word for things like violence, grief, or anger. The closest they have is "unjoyful" and "sorrow" is considered indecent language. Only the elite priesthood of the Ol-Zhaan are supposed to know the words or the concepts. This is all the better to control the population and "protect" them from the human tendency for violent or anti-social behavior.
* In Creator/GeneWolfe's ''Literature/BookOfTheNewSun'' the Ascians were only permitted to speak memorized phrases from Approved Texts. Anything else was not correct thought. Played out full throttle in [[https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/1983-wolfe-thecitadeloftheautarch-thejustman the story]] told by Loyal to the Group of 17. Subverted, as Severian notes that Loyal to the Group of 17 is able to use the phrases to communicate meanings different from their original intention.
* ''Literature/Babel17'' by Creator/SamuelRDelany is built wholly around this trope. The smallest (and least spoilish) example is a race of aliens whose language is based almost entirely around temperature gradients but have no word for "house" -- because of this, they build incomprehensible starships that look like a mass of strung-together boiled eggs. And of course, the titular language [[spoiler: enables extremely fast thinking and enhanced spatial awareness]]. More relevant to this trope, that language has no words for [[spoiler: "I" or "you"]] and thus twists the outlooks of those who speak it.
* Examples from the Literature/{{Discworld}}:
** ''Literature/WitchesAbroad'' uses this, with specific reference to the legend that the Inuit have twenty words for snow, by saying it's false. Similarly, dwarves don't have a hundred words for "rock". As per their obsession of mining, they have words describing the ''precise kind'' of rock -- igneous, sedimentary, and that's just to start -- but not one for just "rock". "Show a dwarf a rock and he sees, for example, an inferior piece of crystalline sulphite of barytes."

*** Vorbis (a powerful Omnian Quisitor), while visiting the Ephebian Tyrant to persuade them to surrender, notes that "slave" is an Ephebian word, and Omnians have no word for slave. The Tyrant replies "I imagine fish have no word for water."

** Played straight with the D'regs. For one, that isn't their original name, but all their neighbors used the word for "enemy" and they adopted it out of pride. They use the same word for "stranger" and "target," mirroring how some Native American languages like Navajo or Apache use the same word for "foreigner" and "enemy." Their word for "freedom" is also the same as their word for "fighting".

** In ''Literature/{{Hogfather}}'', Death has difficulty explaining to his granddaughter exactly what happened to the Discworld's version of SantaClaus, because there is no precisely accurate human word for it (essentially, the Hogfather ceased to exist due to lack of belief). He eventually settles on "Gone."
** In ''Literature/TheColourOfMagic'', there is a mention of Black Oroogu, a language containing "no nouns, and only one adjective, which is obscene." We never see its speakers, but there are presumably either not many of them left or, um, quite a few of them.

** Trolls have only one word for plants, because they don't have to interact with them -- all plants can be squished if they are in the way, and they aren't needed for food, since trolls eat rock. In ''Literature/MovingPictures'', this leads to Detritus presenting his sweetheart with a large uprooted tree rather than the flowers she tried to request.

--->"[[AC:Let me put forward another suggestion: That you are nothing more than a lucky species of ape that is trying to understand the complexities of creation via a language that evolved in order to tell one another where the ripe fruit was?"]]
*** Hex has a similar opinion of human languages:

*** Brought up in the narration, when Polly is talking to her friend about her odd behavior and possible miracles. The narration mentions that her language had no word for "freaky," but she would have welcomed its inclusion. She settles on calling it "strange."
*** There's also mention of a Borogravian folk song called "Plogviehze", which means [[TranslationYes "The Sun Has Risen, Let's Make War!"]] Vimes notes that it takes a very special history to get that into one word. The song also includes a phrase that roughly translates to "glowing opportunity" but more literally means "a great big fish"; this is what clues Vimes in that the country is not just backwards, but ''completely insane''.
** In ''Literature/{{Snuff}}'', goblins' way of speaking initially makes them seem stupid. Miss Beedle later explains that their vocabulary and mode of thought simply doesn't translate well; for example, rather than naming lots of different colors, they name only a few but have lots of phrasings that express how they blend together.

* In the allegorical fantasy novel ''Crown of the Dragon'', there is a subversion: It takes place in a world divided into two countries, good and evil. The evil country is pretty much what you'd expect, but the good country has things like enforced mandatory smiling, and has wiped out all words with negative meanings. They can still say "not good" when they mean "bad", it's just heavily frowned upon. When the inevitable clash with the evil kingdom comes, they have to dig out ancient pages from forbidden works in order to fight the Black Prince's "scheming".
* Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand''. Dr. Mahmoud (a linguist) says that since the Martians don't have words for "war," "weapon" or "fighting," they aren't aggressive. He says: "If a word for a concept isn't in a language, then its culture simply doesn't have the referent the missing word would symbolize." However, this is subverted at the end when we learn that the Martians are more than capable of annihilating entire planets if they feel the need. Because the Martian civilization we see is so immensely powerful in terms of their longevity and psychic ability, they literally have no "weapons." They think things out of existence, and it happens. "War" and "fight" carry the implication that the other side could fight back and defeat you, whereas Martians have no need to describe anything between "peace" and "extermination".
* Heinlein again, in ''Literature/BetweenPlanets''. Don Harvey is trying to decide who he can trust with a very important secret.
-->'''Mr. Costello''': See here--I've studied comparative semantics--the whistling talk [of the dragons] does not even contain a symbol for the concept of falsehood. ''And what a person does not have symbols for he can't think about!'' Ask him, Mr. Harvey! ''Ask him in his own speech.'' If he answers at all, you can believe him.
* This was first posed by Heinlein in his novella ''Literature/{{Gulf}}'', which featured a one-phoneme-per-concept "Speedtalk." It's extremely interesting and has been written about by many linguists.
** An attempt at creating a speed talk-like language has been made. Ithkuil is listed under StarfishLanguage and described as "You Head A'splode, the Language."
** Mark Rosenfelder [[http://zompist.com/kitlong.html#howmany debunked this idea]] as part of his Language Construction Kit.
* In Creator/DavidEddings' ''Literature/TheTamuli'', this pops up with the Troll language when the knights have a working alliance with the Trolls. Turns out the Trolls don't have a word for 'I'm sorry', 'I apologize', or even anything close to it, since a troll never does anything he's sorry for. In this case, it's not supposed to show them as particularly virtuous, but rather as childlike -- or even animal-like -- innocents.

** ''The Literature/NewJediOrder'' series has a bioengineered creature used by the [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Yuuzhan Vong invaders]] that seems to be a ShoutOut to ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''--the tizoworm, a little wriggly thing one places in one's ear that translates for one. However, bred as it was by Yuuzhan Vong, it doesn't really have a word for "peace".

** In ''Literature/LegacyOfTheForce: Revelation'', Baltan Carid states that the [[{{Conlang}} Mandalorian language]] has no word for "hero" -- not because they have no concept of heroism, but because they take it for granted. The closest they come is the insult "hut'uun", which means "one who is not a hero". The article does claim "hero" means "prepared to die for your family and friends, or what you hold dear," which has [[CreatorProvincialism historically been most cultures]]' idea of [[HumansAreWarriors "dignified behavior"]], not "hero" (which tends to involve, as mentioned in the formula of many military honors, "above and beyond"). ''Mando'a'' as set down by Creator/KarenTraviss' ''Literature/RepublicCommandoSeries'' also does not have gendered pronouns or make any difference between "friend" and "sibling." If you've seen enough battles with a Mando, you might as well be his brother. The culture also has a proverb that translates to "family is more than blood".

** In ''Literature/TalesFromJabbasPalace'' C-3PO explains that because Hutts are able to consume most any substance with no ill effect there are no Huttese words for "poison". "Fierfek", the Huttese word most other races assume to mean poison, is actually slang for "hex".
* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' itself parodies this trope in its discussion about the Shaltanac race of Broop Kidron XIII, whose only equivalent to the expression "the other man's [[GrassIsGreener grass is always greener]]" is "the other Shaltanac's joopleberry shrub is always a more mauve-y shade of pinky russet." The ''Guide'' concludes that "the best way not to be unhappy is not to have a word for it."
** And then plays with it in ''So Long and Thanks for All the Fish'', with lorry driver Rob [=McKenna=]. He refers to the 50-words-for-snow idea, and ups it with meticulously describing over 200 types of rain--and, aside from the multiple Inuit/Eskimo/guys who live north language issue, does it for the same reasons.
* In ''Literature/GulliversTravels'', the eponymous Gulliver comes upon the Houyhnhnms, a race of sentient horses who live in a simplistic Utopian society and are relatively naive about the evils of the world; for example, they lack a word for "lie". To describe the concept, they refer to "saying the thing which is not".
* In ''Literature/ThreeWorldsCollide'' by Eliezer Yudkowsky, the alien [[EatsBabies Baby Eaters]] have more children than they can support and eat the excess. Their word for "to be moral" is the same as their word for "to eat babies." The Super Happy People from the same story think and communicate by exchanging DNA, so their words (or rather, their DNA codes) for "to have sex" and "to talk" are the same.
* Literature/KnownSpace series by Creator/LarryNiven:

** The Puppeteers are a race of aliens who evolved from skittish grazing herbivores, so being a DirtyCoward is practically their [[PlanetOfHats racial hat]]. Their word for "leader" is "Hindmost", implying that they believe that a great leader truly leads from the back. Also of note, they have no concept of humour, which makes sense seeing as when you're laughing at a joke, your situational awareness is impaired and your breathing pattern is disrupted, and in the words of a Puppeteer, no sane sapient would ''ever'' willingly disable a defense mechanism.
** Inverted by humanity's rulers in the time between Gil Hamilton's adventures and first contact with the Kzin - "war" and "weapons" may be forgotten words, but only because human culture and history have been thoroughly folded, spindled and mutilated to erase the concepts behind them. Hostility and conflict, even on a personal level, are viewed as borderline obscenities. This nearly gets the first human crew to meet the Kzin killed; only at the last moment does a crewman think to use the ship's drive (a laser so powerful it doubles as a communication link at interstellar distances) to carve up the Kzinti ship.

** Kzinti language contains numerous [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_%28sociolinguistics%29 registers]] (mislabeled "tenses") for interaction between different classes. Anything spoken in the Dominant Tense is automatically an insult (and anything in the Dominated Tense is an apology), and using the Imperative Tense[[note]]not the Ultimate Imperative Tense, mind you, just the regular one[[/note]] means "Obey instantly or be torn to pieces." Registers are not tenses, but [[CriticalResearchFailure doing the research]] on theoretical linguistics was a lot harder when there was no Internet.

* In ''[[Literature/CallahansCrosstimeSaloon Callahan's Legacy]]'', the alien creature the gang nicknames "The Lizard" has 360-degree vision, its three eyes spaced around its body. This comes into play when they're trying to talk with it. Though it doesn't trust them...
-->'''Jake Stonebender''': As Mary had pointed out, the three-eyed Lizard ''did not have a blind spot'', had in its experience no analogs for such biped binocular concepts as "sneak up on," "behind your back," "blindside," or "backstab"--and hence was just a little less paranoid than a human would have been. They obviously had concepts for "TrapDoor" and "DeathFromAbove", however.
* Literature/TheCulture apparently invokes this intentionally with 'Marain', their official language, which in-universe was [[ConLang created from whole cloth]] around the time of the Culture's foundation. Some of the Narrators take time in their '[[DirectLineToTheAuthor Translation Notes]]' to lambast such 'barbaric' concepts as gender-specific pronouns, for example. This is a plot point in ''The Player of Games''; Marain is contrasted against Azadian, which Gurgeh learns in order to understand his opponents better. [[spoiler: Before his last match, his drone deliberately engages him in conversation in Marain in order to help him think with more of a Culture perspective again, which proves to be the key to the game.]]

** The Canim in the series have a very martial culture, and they supposedly have a dozen different words that translate to English (or [[HumansByAnyOtherName Aleran]], or [[TranslationConvention whatever you call what the reader is reading]]) as "enemy". However, the only such word we actually hear is ''gadara'', which means more specifically something like "[[WorthyOpponent honorable and respected enemy]], [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou whom I alone claim the right to kill]]". A ''gadara'' is considered better than a friend, since they have to defend their claim on the other's eventual death.
** The Marat had no word for lying until they started talking to Alerans. The closest they got was someone being mistaken, and accusing someone of being "intentionally mistaken" can result in a lethal duel. The protagonist eventually tells his Marat companion to simply use the word "falsehood," in order to avoid confusion with the other meanings of the word "lie."
* Creator/JackVance's SF novel ''Literature/TheLanguagesOfPao'', where the plot centered around a project to completely change the culture of a planet by replacing their native language with created languages specifically designed to shape their thought patterns. It is worth noting that the project [[spoiler:ultimately fails miserably with a switch to a language that's a blend of all the created languages, likely making it a deconstruction.]]

* Old Solar in C. S. Lewis's Literature/SpaceTrilogy has no words for 'bad' or 'evil' or 'sin' or 'war' or... pretty much anything else that doesn't exist in the sinless society of the aliens; due to not having the spiritual Fall that Earth did (this is extended to the rest of the universe as well, Earth being unique in that regard). In the first book, Ransom tries to translate the villain Weston's speech into Old Solar and has to take [[TranslationYes an entire sentence for almost every word of Weston's]]. Eventually he just gives up and has to inform Oyarsa that there is no way to translate Weston's diatribe.
** In the second book, the hero discovers to his surprise that there ''is'' actually a word for "evil" in the unfallen language (in the first book, he had to make do with the euphemism "bent"). Apparently it's a very advanced concept, and he'd just never run across the word on Mars.

* ''Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse'' novels:
** ''Literature/DoctorsOrders'' by Creator/DianeDuane mentions that the [[SpacePirates Orion Pirates]] use the same word for "stealing" as "getting paid".
** The ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'' novels expand on the Ferengi language, saying they have 57 words for "customer" (one of which also means "river sludge") and several words for "no" (which one you use indicates [[EveryManHasHisPrice how much latinum is needed to change your mind]]).
** In ''Literature/StarTrekKlingonEmpire'' the IKS ''Gorkon'' find a planet with such an intense warrior culture that the universal translator cannot convert "peace" into a concept that makes sense to them. [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Klingons]] being [[PlanetOfHats Klingons]], they consider this a fairly strong point in favour of the Children of San-Tarah.

* This is how the people with soft-cypher chips manage to get around [[spoiler:Korozhet]] mind control in ''Literature/RatsBatsAndVats''. The [[spoiler:Korozhet]] language has one word for every possible concept they've ever thought of, and one word only. The elasticity of the English language means that native English speakers can think of alternative terms to think of their masters by, which they are not programmed to unconditionally love.
** The same trope gets displayed in the speaking habits, and thusly personalities, of the genetically engineered rodent warriors. Rats, who talk in [[YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe Ye Olde Englishe]] and name themselves after various Shakespearean villain characters, are a race of {{Loveable Rogue}}s who spit on most human forms of honor, are only interested in food, drink and sex, casually steal whatever they fancy and have sex whenever they feel like it. Bats, meanwhile, speak with an {{Oireland}} accent and use Oireland names, and are also politically fractious, ever-speechifying types who are big on unity and brotherhood and taking the fight to the "oppressors". Rats were given language training out of Shakespeare plays, whilst Bats used "Wobbly" song lyrics and Irish patriotism speeches.
* In Creator/RobertJSawyer's ''Literature/TheNeanderthalParallax'', the [[CantArgueWithElves Neanderthal]] word for war is a long, clunky affair, and Ponter is [[{{Anvilicious}} Anvilliciously]] horrified to learn how short and simple the English word "war" is.
* In ''[[Literature/GarrettPI Sweet Silver Blues]]'', Morley translates a phrase as either "Dawn of Night's Mercy" or "Dawn of Night's Madness". Garrett is perplexed by the disparate translations, until he's told that the phrase was Dark Elfin, in which "mercy" and "madness" are the same word.
* In the first book of ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', ''Game of Thrones'', it is claimed that "[t]here is no word for 'thank you' in Dothraki." They do seem to understand the concept though, they just don't mess around with words and prefer more direct methods. Drogo struggles a bit trying to get it across, and ends up with "any horse in the camp is yours".

** It is stated in the TV series that the Dothraki also have ten different words for "horse".
*** Though to be fair [[http://www.macmillandictionary.com/thesaurus-category/british/types-of-horse-or-pony English has way more than that]].
* According to one of James Clavell's novels, the Chinese have no word for love. (What he seems to be referring to is that ''ai'' means both "love" and "want".)
* Tamora Pierce played with this a few times--for example, in her [[Literature/CircleOfMagic Winding Circle]] ''Daja's Book'', when they had interactions with Traders again, it comes up that the Trader language has "a dozen words for 'thank-you,' each with its own drop of dislike." Acknowledging a debt is ''not'' pleasant.
* In ''Literature/IncarnationsOfImmortality'', it's [[BlatantLies claimed]] that the Romani (Gypsies) have no words for "possession" or "ownership", meaning that the concept of "stealing" [[NobleSavage doesn't exist for them]].
** In RealLife, they do actually have those concepts—their word for "to own" is apparently ''nogo'', "to steal" is ''chor''—but didn't so much consider them as applying to non-Romani. They're an Indo-Iranian people, they basically converted their ancestors' raid-the-outsiders traditions into steal-from-the-Gadjo traditions. A lot fewer people get riddled with arrows in their version.
* ''Literature/DirkGentlysHolisticDetectiveAgency'' poked fun at this:
-->'''Dirk''': There is no such word as "impossible" in my dictionary. (''brandishing the abused book'') In fact, everything between 'herring' and 'marmalade' appears to be missing.

* In the world of ''Literature/ThisPerfectDay'' the words "hate" and "fight" survive only as cuss words (whereas "fuck" is just another transitive verb.) When the hero gets angry enough to say "Fight Uni!" he has to explain that he's not swearing, he literally means they should take violent action.

* ''Literature/{{In The Courts of the Crimson Kings}}''. The Martians don't have separate words for "pirate" and "police officer" or "ruler" and "tyrant".
* Inverted in the short story "Never Forget" by Tom Holt. The narrator describes Caius Laelius as being so dedicated to being a YesMan that he learned a language that has a word for "yes" in it.
* In the ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'' series it's said that speaking Anglic is what allows neo-dolphins to think rationally. [[spoiler: And the transcendent species designed the Galactic languages to stifle creativity and ensure their former clients couldn't threaten them.]]
* ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'': The Alethi and other Vorin cultures have a FantasticCasteSystem where people with lighter colored eyes are on top. As a result their only word for "noble" is "lighteyes." Whenever a foreigner talks about foreign nobles (who don't necessarily have light eyes) in Alethi they end up having to refer to them in a roundabout way as "lighteyes who don't have light eyes", and the Alethi among them often have a hard time accepting the concept.

* Brian Aldiss’s story “Confluence” (1967; repr. in his collection ''Literature/TheMomentOfEclipse'', Granada Panther, 1973) purports to be a dictionary giving English equivalents for codes representing the semantic units or “words” (sound plus posture) of the language of a recently contacted alien race. The story allows us to bring to consciousness a skill which we all have to some degree, that of forming ideas about a culture from the semantic structure of its vocabulary (as with the many synonyms for “kill” in Latin). The aliens have a word for “the struggle that takes place in the night between the urge to urinate and the urge to continue sleeping” (p. 98), a phenomenon familiar to us but for which we have no special word. We can deduce from the fact that they have a single word for both “a thinking machine that develops a stammer” and “the act of pulling on the trousers while running uphill” (p. 97) not only their level of technology and their style of dress, but also something about their attitude to their technology (like our attitude to our technology, a sort of helpless rage). We detect a more sinister aspect of their culture in the existence of a number of words, each carefully labelled “obsolete”, connected with a ceremony of eating one’s maternal grandfather.

** Once Kris's expedition deciphers the HumanAlien PlanetLooters' language in ''Tenacious'', they discover that while it has over a dozen words for "submission", it interestingly has no word for "war", as the AbsoluteXenophobe marauders consider all intelligent life other than themselves to be vermin. [[spoiler:It also turns out to have no word for "surrender", so when a squadron of enemy ships seemingly tries to surrender, they attempt to get this across by transmitting, "We will be your slaves," over and over. ([[ShootTheDog Kris has to destroy them]] because they're refusing her commands to cut thrust and divert from a strategic jump point, meaning [[ISurrenderSuckers she can't tell whether the surrender is genuine]].)]]

* ''Genocidal Organ'', by Project Itoh (also made into an animated film) is about the hunt for an American linguistics expert called John Paul, who has discovered a 'language of genocide' and is using it to start ethnic conflicts in Third World countries. Linguistic relativity being discredited is brought up in a JustBetweenYouAndMe discussion between the protagonist and John Paul.

* {{Justified| trope}} in ''Literature/{{Remembrance of Earths Past}}'': Trisolarans have visible brains which light up as they think, so for them, thought and communication are one and the same, and it takes them a while to figure out that the human words ''think'' and ''say'' aren't synonyms. The idea of communicating something untrue is foreign to them, and they have major diffiiculty grokking the concept of deception. Humans use this to their advantage.

** The Troll language is also [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004292 much more complex]] than the human language when it comes to the subject of romance. Human culture would, for example, have difficulty diagnosing kismesis -- but would also have trouble with moirallegiance (and would be likely to consider it extremely unhealthy). Troll culture, on the other hand, has no term for homosexuality, since troll reproduction works so that any pairing can produce progeny (it's complex, and it involves birth by proxy). This disconnect was only [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004528 recently learned]]:

** One quest in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsOnline'' reveals that there is no word in the Orcish language meaning "fragile". This reflects their warlike culture, which values strength.

*** Khazalid also subverts this in another way: it has ''no'' words for abstract concepts...but it's not that Dwarfs don't understand abstract concepts, it's that all abstract concepts are expressed via bywords. For instance, the literal meaning of the word for "Everlasting" is "similar to a mountain", the literal meaning of the word for "untrustworthy" is "similar to a thief", and the word for "shoddy" is "[[PunyEarthlings built by a human]]".

** One quest in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsOnline'' reveals that there is no word in the Orcish language meaning "fragile".