looking for a linguistical/semiotic quote

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 9:14 PM, rusi <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am looking for a quote
> (from Whorf/Sapir/Wittgenstein/Humboldt dunno... that 'school')
>
> It goes something like this:
>
> What characterizes a language is not what we can say in it but what we must -- like it or not -- say.

I think you may be looking for Larry Wall's statement in his State of
the Onion talk:

http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/12/06/soto-11.html

He's comparing human and programming languages and says pretty much
what you're saying. Of couse, he's probably not the first person to
have made that remark in some form or another... so you may still be
looking for someone else.

ChrisA