Language is the key to knowledge

This is a statement I first came across as a student Nursery Nurse and over the years I have wondered if it's true. Is it really the key to knowledge? What is it like to live without language? Alex our third son has autism and his language was delayed, I have asked him if he remembers life before he really understood language, he says that he used to understand everything in pictures, his memories are in pictures yet he can give words to those pictures now. John has always been a language based person, he has never really used images to remember things, I am a very visual person, I will often remember a page of a book in order to remember things. The reason I am rambling on about this is because seeing John lose his language has shown me that this statement is so true. As we have helped John to recover it has become clear that most of John's knowledge is still in his brain ,but he has needed the key of language to unlock that knowledge. John has been talking about the gift of language, he says he realises how much he has taken that gift for granted. I think we take so much for granted we are given so many wonderful gifts from God, yet we just see them as a right without really grasping all that we have, we are told in the Bible that the Lord upholds all things by the Word of His power, yet I must confess I forget this, it's a solemn thing to be reminded of our weakness and total dependency upon our Heavenly Father.