Language and thought

In grad school, we studied the idea that the thoughts that one is able to think are constrained by one's language.  In yesterday's New York Times is an extremely good article that brings this debate up to date.  At university, we were taught that language has no ability to constrain what one thinks, and I taught this point of view to my students.  My point of view softened a bit after some interesting discussion with my dad one day, and the article supports that softened point of view:  language does not absolutely constrain what can be thought, but it does influence what is thought.