I remember the first time I read about the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis — it really changed how I saw language as a tool. Language no longer felt like just a means of communicating with other people, but now I saw it as having an additional role in the internal representation of ideas. I like to think of language as an improvement on compression of thoughts beyond what is possible solely with speech and images. This is probably why I am such a fan of text-based systems.
The following two links talk about recent studies on how the naming of colors changes how we see the world and how much this naming process is linked to brain structure.
Link: The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains part one and part two.
This site from the National Library of Medicine allows you to interact with old medical texts dating as far back as the 17th centry BC.
Link: Turning the Pages
The last post made me curious about other old books that are available online and I came across this list. This allows me to mention one of my favourite words: incunabulum.