In a sense... I define intelligence to be knowledge + reason. Language is the medium for reason, but language itself is not reason. For example, Wikipedia is a

In a sense... I define intelligence to be knowledge + reason. Language is the medium for reason, but language itself is not reason. For example, Wikipedia is a highly knowledgeable system with lots of language, but Wikipedia itself has no ability to reason, and thus os not an intelligent system. When something/someone reasons about things, they/it use language to do so. You can't get around that. The language might be a natural one like English, or something contrived like math, but it's language all the same. If we reason about something we have no knowledge on, we are not being intelligent. On the other hand, of we reason about something we are knowledgeable about, we are acting intelligently.