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| An estimated 7,000
languages exist in The World. |
Languages
Language is the normal way humans communicate. Only
humans use language, though many other animals
communicate in various ways.
Human language has syntax, a set of rules for connecting
words together to make statements and questions.
Language can also be changed, by adding new words, for
example, to describe new things. Other animals may
inherit a set of calls which have pre-set functions.
Language may be done by speech or by writing or by
moving the hands to make signs. It follows that language
is not just any way of communicating. Even some human
communication is not language: see non-verbal
communication. Humans also use language for thinking.
Language is a word that may be used by extension: |
- The language of a community or
country.
- The ability of speech.
- Formal language in mathematics,
logic and computing.
- Sign language for deaf people
(people who cannot hear).
- A type of school subject.
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UNESCO says that 2,500 languages are at risk of becoming
extinct. |
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Universals of language
All languages share certain things which separate them
from all other kinds of communication. |
- A language has rules which are
shared by a community.
- All human languages are based on
sound and hearing, or in the case of sign language,
vision. All the basic sound units, or phonemes, have
this in common: they can be spoken by the human voice,
and heard by the human ear.
- The sounds come out in a sequence,
not all at once. This is mimicked in writing, where the
marks are put on the paper or screen in the same
sequence.
- The stream of sounds have little
gaps between them, and come in bigger packages. We call
the bigger packets sentences or questions or replies or
comments.
- In most languages, English being
one, the syntax or order of the words can change the
meaning: "the cat sat on the man" is different from "the
man sat on the cat".
- Words (which may be made up of more
than one phoneme) divide up into two classes: content
and non-content. Content words have meaning: nouns,
verbs, adjectives, etc. Non-content words are there to
make the language work: and, not, in, out, what, etc.
Grammar consists of studying how words fit together to
mean something.
- All languages have:
- sentences with two types of
expression: nouns and verbs: Jill is here.
- adjectives to modify nouns: good
food.
- ways of linking: sink or swim.
- dummy elements: Jill likes to swim,
so do I.
- devices to order or ask questions:
Get up! Are you ill?
- Most of the languages have a written
form. Before the invention of audio recording, the
writing system was the only way to keep track of spoken
information.
- All languages constantly evolve. New
words appear, new form of saying things, new accents.
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There are many more things in common between languages.
Inheritance
The capacity to learn and use language is inherited.
Normally, all humans are born with this capability. Which
language is learned by a child depends on which language is
spoken by the child's community. The capacity is inherited,
but the particular language is learned.
Children have a special period, from about 18 months to
about four years, which is critical for learning the
language. If this is seriously disrupted, then their
language skills will be damaged. Older people learn
differently, so they seldom learn a second language as well
as they learn their native language. |
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Types of language
Mathematics and computer science use created languages
called formal languages (like computer programming
languages), but these may or may not be 'true'
languages. Mathematics itself is seen as a language by
many. Some people consider musical notation to be a way
of writing the musical language.
Chinese is the language with the most native speakers in
the world, but Chinese is not really a language. It is a
close family of dialects, some of which are as different
as Romance languages are from one another.
English is often called "the international language",or
the world's lingua franca. It is the main second
language of the world and the international language of
science, travel, technology, business, diplomacy, and
entertainment. |
- English as a first language: 380
million.
- English as an official second
language: up to 300 million.
- English taught as a second language,
but with no official status: anyone's guess, up to 1000
million/1 billion.
- Chinese (Mandarin): 390 million
native speakers.
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Some languages are made up so that a lot of people around
the world can learn them, without the new languages being
tied to any specific country or place. These are called
constructed languages. One of the most popular of these
languages is Esperanto, which is sometimes called "La
Internacia Lingvo," or "The International Language." Another
of these languages is called Volapuk, which was popular
about a hundred years ago but is much less popular now. It
has mostly been replaced by languages like Esperanto,
Interlingua, and Ido.
Part of the reason that Volapuk became unpopular is that
some sounds are hard to say for people who speak Spanish or
English, two of the most widely spoken languages in the
world. |
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