Editing Openai/69178091-a918-8006-bef8-22bf571fbdab (section)

=== Human languages encode metaphysics. ===
They smuggle in assumptions about:
* identity (“X is Y”)
* essences (something is a type)
* objecthood (world chopped into “things”)
* time segmentation (tenses, aspect)
* agency & causality (what counts as an event or an action)
* subject–object dichotomy

The Indo-European verb “to be” is especially problematic:
* It forces X = Y identity statements.
* It creates essence categories (“a man is rational”, “the mind is separate from the body”).
* It pushes toward substantialism (Aristotle, Descartes, substance ontology).

You’ve often sensed this: our cognition prefers essences and abhors flux. Indo-European languages feed that bias.

Some languages don’t work this way:
* Classical Chinese uses no “to be” at all; ideas appear as relations and events.
* Navajo encodes processes and transformations rather than objects.
* Bantu languages (e.g. Ubuntu-related languages) encode relational personhood.
* Ojibwe divides the world into animate / inanimate, not substances.
* Ewe / Fon treat qualities as verbs rather than nouns.

So yes: language shapes ontology.