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What is Language ?
S. Jain One of the common misconcepts about language is that it is inherited, that it is passed on from one generation to another. Hence the term ‘mother-tongue’. Let’s assume that a baby born of Gujarati parents on the 27th February 1972 is adopted by Swiss parents speaking French a week after its birth. What language would it speak in 1977 ? Of course French and not Gujarati. Language is thus acquired, learned by the child during its early years. By the time the child is six years old, perhaps it’s acquired the skill to use the language properly – language within the range of its experience.
Many people think that writing is
Language. What comes first – speech?
Or writing ? The baby first hears language spoken in the house, then tries to
gain control over its Vocal Organs and imitates.
That’s how speech precedes writing which doesn’t figure in till
perhaps the baby goes to school. Scripts
or writing systems don’t make languages, scientifically speaking.
Several decades ago Kashmiris used the Sharda alphabet.
The Sharda script, being complex, made people think of a simpler system.
A few persons modified the Arabic Persian alphabet and wrote their
letters, books in Kashmiri using their version of the Arabic alphabet. Not satisfied with this, some people brought in the Dev
Nagari alphabet. Today one may use
either of these alphabets without changing the language.
Again, there are many languages in the World that have no scripts, still
they are languages alright. Speech
thus comes first, writing follows.
“In the beginning was the Word, the
word was with God and the word was God”, says St. John’s Gospel.
Many believe that language is a God-given gift; it has come from the
heavens. If it were so, why would
the animal that belongs to the species of equus cabalus be called ‘a :
sp’ in Persian, ‘a : s’ in Pushto, ‘ashwa’ in Sanskrit, ‘ghoda’ in
Hindi, ‘cheval’ in French ? Language
is a man-made thing and has played a great role in the evolution of man.
“Man is the monarch of biological evolution” ; says a 20th
century biologist of eminence, “he is the only animal who can laugh, speak,
and sing meaningfully; coupled with these are his faculties of conceptual
thought and flights of imagination; in short, he is the only animal who can
think of things in their absence”.
Let us look at this unusual dialogue.
A Persian Speaker comes to Ahmedabad for the first time.
As he is walking towards Manek Chowk, he sees a young man not
particularly in any hurry. He makes a gesture and asks, “chand baja : ast ?
The Gujarati youth replies : “Sada : a : th thaya chee”.
He shows him his wrist-watch. The
Persian gentleman gives a broad smile and says, “tashakkur”.
The situation and gestures make the meaning clear, not the sounds or
speech of either speaker, Neither of them understands the other’s language.
They understood each other, however, precisely because meaning is
beyond the scope of normal language study.
Meaning is the end-product of all language studies.
Language is not sounds, nor meaning; it is what connects the two in
regular ways. Language uses sounds
to communicate meaning.
Many people feel that words carry
meaning; that words and what they convey are inseparable.
One of Kalidas’ verses reads as follows : Vaagarthaaviva samprukto vaagartha pratipattaye' jata: pitarauvande Paarvatii Parameshvarau
Well, words are at best vehicles to
convey meaning; but they are not the meaning.
Each language uses its own words, and the choice is purely arbitrary.
Very often we think that the colour red stands for ‘danger’;
we have in our mind the train guard’s flag perhaps. But, does red always stand for danger ?
It yes, what about Burn’s fine poem :
My love’s like a red, red rose ?
Carried
away by the sounds of words, many of us feel that there is a definite
relationship between words and sounds. A
friend of mine was very unhappy about the sound b in English.
He said, “Look at this awful sound b
! How bad
! Listen to the words : bed-bug,
blast, blood, bloody”.
Pop came someone’s reply : “What
about beautiful?”
A few words are onomatopoetic, and they do echo the meaning.
In such cases perhaps the sound and sense go together.
However, Onomatopoeia is not universal, it is strictly limited to one
language. A bell rings. What
is it except two pieces of metal striking against each other ?
However, we have languages using different words for the same activity.
In English, we say, the bell rings ‘ding-dong’.
It rings ‘ghan-ghan’ in Marathi, ‘than-than’ in Gujarati,
‘bim-bim’ in German. Each
language thus arbitrarily chooses and uses the words as convenient labels to
denote certain aspects of reality. They
stand in a symbolic relationship to meaning.
Language is a highly organized network
of sounds, clusters of sounds, words and phrases.
Each system is complete by itself. Some
years ago a sociologist became greatly worried about the irregularities and the
number of exceptions to rules in languages.
‘All systems leak’, he complained.
However, true it is to say that each system is well-knit and tight and it
doesn’t leak.
One of the important needs of man is
communication. Though a certain
amount of meaning can be communicated in a limited way through gestures, it is
not the whole story. Gestures could
convey precious little, but they could not replace language.
Honeybees communicate; ants do so, animals do so in a limited way.
If a crow sights a dead crow, he caws in a particular way.
He wouldn’t do so if he didn’t see any dead crow.
His communication system is greatly limited and can’t go beyond the 2
to 3 signals that are part of it. Language,
however, is infinitely complex. Though
it uses a certain limited number of sounds, the number of sentences a speaker
may produce rises to infinity.
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H M Patel Institute of English Training & Research, Vallabh Vidyanagar - 388120, Gujarat, India Phone : 091-2692-230193, 091-2692-230079 |
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