Definition of Language
A Language is a word that is usually used to describe different tongues like French, German, Japanese and so on. But what does language actually mean? It is defined as the method of human communication either spoken or written and is well structured. Language can be split into three parts: phonology (sound patterns), syntax (arrangement and form of words) and semantics and pragmatics (sentence meaning in a context)
People studying language do not look at whether, for example, a sentence is grammatically correct. Linguists look at the types of patterns that are present and try to analyze them in a scientific manner. They concentrate on describing language but do not prescribe it (offer solutions). In layman’s terms, it is like a doctor describing the disease without giving medicine to the patient. These people ask themselves three questions. First, “What is language?”, second: “How does language work?” and third: “What do all languages have in common?”. You may speak about the numerous differences between languages but finding what they have in common is hard. These three questions are the base for studying language in depth. Apart from these, the linguist also tries to find out how a child learns to speak, which is very useful in the education field.
When you go to school, nobody tells you how a baby learns a language and we never think about it. New parents generally feel the need to “teach” their mother tongue to the child, but that is not at all necessary. Like every system in the human body, first language acquisition happens on its own. How? The child listens to what its parents are saying and reacts to them by making sounds. The reason why the mother tongue is acquired automatically is because the child needs to survive. It vocalizes its needs by screaming and crying. The child first develops hearing in the womb when the mother reaches 18 weeks of pregnancy. Language acquisition starts around that time. So, the child knows that when it cries, the mother will feed milk. At the age of two, the child starts speaking in one- or two-word sentences. By the time the child is five years old, the child goes to school and the first language acquisition is nearly complete. In school, a second language is taught. The child can no longer pick up or catch words like it used to when it was still a baby. Hence the saying: “Mother tongue is caught, English is taught”.
Humans are the only beings who are the most sophisticated in terms of communication. In pre-historic times, both humans and animals used sounds to communicate among themselves. Animals do not have their own language. Sure, dogs bark, cats meow, horses neigh and birds tweet but barking, meowing, neighing and tweeting are not languages, but are vocalizations. You don’t know whether a dog is speaking French or German or Korean for that matter. It just voices its needs through barking. Animals use intonations to convey their message to other animals of their kind. Humans on the other hand, have the most variety and are the most developed when it comes to language.
Humans also have something that is known as unwritten language, as in language that is spoken, but not written. An example for such a language is Swiss German. One of the official languages in Switzerland and the national language in Germany is German. German is spoken exactly the way it is written, i.e. it is a transparent language. However, if your nationality is German and you go to Switzerland, you may expect the locals to speak German as well, but you will feel as if they are speaking a completely different language. In Switzerland, the locals speak Swiss German, a derivation of the German you are familiar with. Foreigners may learn Swiss German by learning High German (Standard German) first and then move on by listening to locals. I learnt German first in school and then I picked up or caught Swiss German by observing my peers outside the classroom. By the time I was in sixth grade, I was fully able to converse in Swiss German without much difficulty. These days locals write messages in Swiss German. The grammatical rules are the same as High German but the spelling may vary depending on how the word is pronounced. Swiss German also has variations depending on which region you are in. Since I live in the German speaking part of Switzerland, I speak “Züri Dütsch”, meaning the German spoken in the canton of Zurich. When you go to the western part of Switzerland, for example the capital Berne, the Swiss German spoken there sounds completely different than in Zurich. So, linguists think about how such variations and derivations of different languages are formed and why they exist and much more in a scientific manner. Such variations may by caused by migration or may be due to cultural differences in different locations. Chinese is an example and so are all languages which have given birth to other languages.
Now that you have some idea about what language is and how it works, I’ll be going more in depth of language and linguistics as well as describe my personal journey on learning languages in this series.
