Friday, July 3, 2009

What is Language ?

People could have communicated through telepathy or using signals, however God created the language to facilitate communication. But is it just for communication? what if you saw something for the first time, something that you don't know its name, would you still remember it a week later?, chances are you will forget it because it has no slot in your memory.

On the other hand, sometimes we take things for granted just because we are familiar with its name!, "ok, that's a tree, next..." and that's why languages die, they die when people lose their appreciation of the vocabulary. Same thing happens when we learn a new language, we forget the words that we didn't appreciate, and by appreciate I mean juggling the word in your head, developing images and connections in your brain, forming your own sentences with the word after connecting with its meaning. Let's say I learned the word of a tree in Japanese (Ki) for the first time, I should start meditating about trees and what a magnificent creature it is, the more feeling of appreciation I develop the more the new word stick to my memory.

But when there is no feeling attached, there is no real learning.

Now, what is a language composed of? If we think of a language as a vehicle taking you from a place to another, it consists of a fixed motor (sentence structures) and a variable amount of gasoline (Vocabulary). Once you build a good motor, and collect an enough amount of gas you are ready for an exciting ride.

Vocabulary is almost the same in most languages, tangible and intangible objects plus abstract ideas and feelings. However the sentence structure varies from one language to another and this could cause a little difficulty in the beginning, but if you look at it from afar, it's actually the same sentence structure but taking a different shape, the basic structures of any language should be the same according to my theory, the additives like time and place and gestures could confuse us from this simple fact, that the basic sentence is the same regardless of the name of the language.

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