Language and Communication

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication. The scientific study of language in any of its senses is called linguistics.

Languages

The approximately 3000-6000 languages that are spoken by humans today are the most salient examples, but natural languages can also be based on visual rather than auditive stimuli, for example in sign languages and written language. Codes and other kinds of artificially constructed communication systems such as those used for computer programming can also be called languages. A language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information.

Human language

When used as a general concept "language" refers to the cognitive faculty that enables humans to learn and use systems of complex communication. The human language faculty is thought to be fundamentally different and of much higher complexity from those of other species. Human language is highly complex in that based in a set of rules relating symbols to their meanings it can form an infinite number of possible utterances from a finite number of elements.

Tool for communication

Yet another definition defines language as a system of communication that enables humans to cooperate. This definition stresses the social functions of language and the fact that humans use it to express themselves, and to manipulate things in the world.

Sounds, words and symbols

All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate a sign with a particular meaning. Spoken languages contain a phonological system that governs how sounds are used to form sequences known as words or morphemes, and a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are used to form phrases and utterances. Written languages and sign languages use visual symbols to represent the sounds of the spoken languages, but they still require syntactic rules that govern the production of meaning from sequences of words.

The evolution of languages

Languages evolve and diversify over time and the history of their evolution can be reconstructed by comparing modern languages and determining which traits their ancestral languages must have had for the later stages to have occurred. A group of languages that descend from a common ancestor are known as a language family - the languages that are most spoken in the world today belong to the Indo-European family which includes languages such as English, Spanish, Russian and Hindi, the Sino-Tibetan languages which include Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese and many others, Semitic languages which include Arabic and the Bantu languages which include Swahili and hundreds of other languages spoken throughout Africa.

 

Languages and culture

Languages, understood as the particular set of speech norms of a particular community, are also a part of the larger culture of the community that speak them. Humans use language as a way of signalling identity with one cultural group and difference from others.