No word, no concept

Peter Gordon, from Columbia University, says that if your language doesn’t have a word for a number, you probable don’t understand that number. This might be true for other concepts also.

Gordon found this out by studying the Pirah?ɬ� people, who live in Brazil. The Pirah?ɬ� only have three words to designate numbers: “one”, “two” and “many”. Not even the words “one” and “two” designate exact numbers; rather, “one” means “roughly one” and “two” means “a few, one or two”. Apparently, they don’t have exact numbers because they simply don’t need them; they use barter for commerce and don’t use money.

(from The Economist)