Quote Originally Posted by Polymirize
So what do you think, does language model our reality? Or construct it?
Both. We construct our model of reality (the "scheme", or "map" of the outside world that exists into our mind) using concepts teached by us by means of the language.

"Everyone who comes in contact with a child is a teacher who incessantly describes the world to him, until the moment when the child is capable or percieving the world as it is described." - D.J.M.- JtI

And after it, we learn how to filter all our perceptions to fit they in terms of the language.

When we see snow, we look at it just enough to recognize what we are seeing as snow. The level of details needed to recognize snow as snow is very low, but as for us it is enough, we only percieve the snow with this low level of detail.
Im sure we simply cant see all the details of snow that a Skimo can see, because their eyes/mind are trained to look at a lot more of details of snow, and recognize it as snow-good-to-walk, or hard-packed-ice, or whatever.

In other words, our mind seeks things known to it in the middle of the chaos that is the total perception, recognize that known things, and discards the perceptions that are unknown to it, so the world outside can be "mapped" into our mind in terms of known concepts.

For example, if an inhabitant of a tribe without contact with the civilization sees a plane, for example, he will try to understand it in terms known by his own perception, so he will understand it as a "metallic bird", or something like. His mind will force the perception to fit in terms of things known to him, even if it makes no sense (cause we know there is not mettalic birds).
And as the concept of "plane" is a thing utterly unknown to him, know the "truth" about his perception will make still less sense than believe he really saw a mettalic bird.

Or, as our mind thinks: "Better a known folly than a unknown truth". Sad but true...