I suspect that it's an argument about nothing. e.g. I can think about my "mother's sister" but I don't care about it enough to invent a shortcut word for it li

I suspect that it's an argument about nothing. e.g. I can think about my "mother's sister" but I don't care about it enough to invent a shortcut word for it like "teyze". To Turks I think it means something because in some families there's great emphasis on the connections with one or other side of the family. It's rather a brutal and dismissive attitude sometimes. So I personally think that groups of people have a common understanding and some commonly accepted attitude that make up their culture. The purpose of words is to reference those feelings. An outsider can understand to a degree because we are all human but they usually get the emphasis wrong and also tend to miss lots of implications. Of course you as an entrant to a culture (e.g. a kid) are going to get educated over time about what it all means and you're going to be discouraged from expressing alternate cultural values because overall not enough people feel like that to have invented convenient ways of expressing it. So language is going to affect you but as some idea becomes popular and needs expression people do invent new words. So you can affect it - if you can get enough people to pick up on your invention by adding a new idea to their mental model of life.