The power of words

Lately I've been pondering on the differences within the homo sapien species... not in terms of physical differences, but more of the inner self. Personality, to be precise, and how much of it is actually affected by language.

The majority of people communicate vocally, with language being their tool. The first thing we hear when we are born, other than the chaos in the delivery room, are voices. And voices are what we hear from then onwards.

It's a challenge for parents to teach their children to speak - it's as if the quicker the child's ability to speak, the smarter their child is, thus the better their parents are at being parents.
But do we ever question the accuracy of language itself? Constitutions are constantly being skimmed through over and over again in search for loopholes, what about the language?
I have been asked in numerous occasions to literally translate a phrase from one language to another, and when I let its impossibility be known, the general assumption is either that I'm oblivious to the word (which of course, is sometimes true) or that I simply am not sincere in helping them out.

That aside, I'm really more interested in how people's personalities are affected by language. Brought up with a Malaysian chinese background, and being exposed to the 'international community,' for almost a decade now, I often find myself trapped with words when wanting to describe one's personality. I may consider myself globally educated, yet why is it that even though I can communicate without a problem in English to friends from all over the world, I sometimesl have trouble understaning the message they are trying to get across to me?

I am no linguist, but it is of no doubt to me that our characters and personalities are heavily influenced by the language we speak. Since language is the main tool for communication, if a word does not exist to describe a particular behaviour, then that behaviour cannot exist. And because of that, we find other cultures "interesting." We think certain things people do are abnormal, simply because in our language, there is no word to match their exact behaviour. As a result, they will never be 'normal' to us, nomatter how much we try to deny it.