Language and its importance

Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought. 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky.

1. Language
Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly
the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific
study of language is called linguistics. Questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as
whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient
Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while
others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought. 20th-century
philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major
figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky.
Estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any
precise estimate depends on a partly arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural
languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using
auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in whistling, signed, or braille. This is because
human language is modality-independent. Depending on philosophical perspectives regarding the
definition of language and meaning, when used as a general concept, "language" may refer to
the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of
rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules.
All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to
particular meanings. Oral, manual and tactile languages contain a phonological system that
governs how symbols are used to form sequences known as words or morphemes, and
a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are combined to form phrases and
utterances.
Human language has the properties of productivity and displacement, and relies entirely on social
convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a much wider range of expressions than any
known system of animal communication. Language is thought to have originated when
early hominins started gradually changing their primate communication systems, acquiring the
ability to form a theory of other minds and a shared intentionality.
[1][2]
This development is
sometimes thought to have coincided with an increase in brain volume, and many linguists see the
structures of language as having evolved to serve specific communicative and social functions.
Language is processed in many different locations in the human brain, but especially
in Broca's and Wernicke's areas. Humans acquire language through social interaction in early
childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The
use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture. Therefore, in addition to its strictly
communicative uses, language also has many social and cultural uses, such as signifying
group identity, social stratification, as well as social grooming and entertainment.
Languages evolve and diversify over time, and the history of their evolution can
be reconstructed by comparing modern languages to determine which traits their ancestral
languages must have had in order for the later developmental stages to occur. A group of languages
that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The Indo-European family is
the most widely spoken and includes languages such as English, Russian, and Hindi; the Sino-
Tibetan family, which includes Mandarin and the other Chinese languages, and Tibetan; the Afro-
Asiatic family, which includes Arabic, Somali, and Hebrew; the Bantu languages, which
include Swahili, and Zulu, and hundreds of other languages spoken throughout Africa; and
the Malayo-Polynesian languages, which include Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog, and hundreds of

2. other languages spoken throughout the Pacific. The languages of the Dravidian family that are
spoken mostly in Southern India include Tamil and Telugu. Academic consensus holds that
between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably
have become extinct by the year 2100.

The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European tongue, speech,
language" through Latin lingua, "language; tongue", and Old French language. The word is
sometimes used to refer to codes, ciphers, and other kinds of artificially constructed
communication systems such as formally defined computer languages used for computer
programming. Unlike conventional human languages, a formal language in this sense is
a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. This article specifically concerns the
properties of natural human language as it is studied in the discipline of linguistics.
As an object of linguistic study, "language" has two primary meanings: an abstract concept, and a
specific linguistic system, e.g. "French". The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who defined
the modern discipline of linguistics, first explicitly formulated the distinction using the French
word langage for language as a concept, langue as a specific instance of a language system,
and parole for the concrete usage of speech in a particular language.
When speaking of language as a general concept, definitions can be used which stress different
aspects of the phenomenon. These definitions also entail different approaches and understandings
of language, and they inform different and often incompatible schools of linguistic theory. Debates
about the nature and origin of language go back to the ancient world. Greek philosophers such
as Gorgias and Plato debated the relation between words, concepts and reality. Gorgias argued that
language could represent neither the objective experience nor human experience, and that
communication and truth were therefore impossible. Plato maintained that communication is
possible because language represents ideas and concepts that exist independently of, and prior to,
language.
During the Enlightenment and its debates about human origins, it became fashionable to speculate
about the origin of language. Thinkers such as Rousseau and Herder argued that language had
originated in the instinctive expression of emotions, and that it was originally closer to music and
poetry than to the logical expression of rational thought. Rationalist philosophers such
as Kant and Descartes held the opposite view. Around the turn of the 20th century, thinkers began
to wonder about the role of language in shaping our experiences of the world – asking whether
language simply reflects the objective structure of the world, or whether it creates concepts that it
in turn imposes on our experience of the objective world. This led to the question of whether
philosophical problems are really firstly linguistic problems. The resurgence of the view that
language plays a significant role in the creation and circulation of concepts, and that the study of
philosophy is essentially the study of language, is associated with what has been called
the linguistic turn and philosophers such as Wittgenstein in 20th-century philosophy. These
debates about language in relation to meaning and reference, cognition and consciousness remain
active today.

3. The Origin of Language:
Language is an institution:
Language is a product not of one cause but of several factors. It is, in fact a social creation, a human
invention an unconscious invention of a whole community. As Professor Whitney has observed,
it is as much an institution as a body of unwritten laws, and like these it has been called forth by
the needs of developing society.”
The linguists are not in a position to form any conjectures as to the precise point in the history of
man at which the germs of speech should have appeared, and the time which they should have
occupied in the successive steps of their development. That the process was a slow one, all agree.
To quote Whitney, “Language making is a mere incident of social life and of cultural growth. It is
as great an error to hold that at some period men are engaged in making and laying up expressions
for their own future use and that of their descendants, as that, at another period, succession shall
find expression. Each period provides just what it has occasion for, nothing more. The production
of language is a continuous process; it varies in rate and kind with the circumstances and habits of
the speaking community, but it never ceases; there was never a time when it was more truly going
than at present.”
Thus language is not the creation of one person or of one period but it is an institution, on which
hundreds of generations and countless individual workers have worked.
Three Instrumentalities of Expression:
The traditional instrumentalities of expression are gestures, grimace and tone. Gesture means the
changes of the position of the various parts of the body, especially of the most mobile parts, the
arms and hands; grimace means the change of expression of features of the countenance, and tone
is the utterance of or the production of audible sound.”
These are also termed natural means of expression. In the first stages of communicative expression,
all these three were used together, and in fact, there can never have been a period or stage in which
all the three instrumentalities were not put to use together. They are used even today. It is very
interesting to know what signs or what facial expressions were used for words.”
James gave a list of 104 signs employed by the North American Indians in the place of words.
Darkness, for instance, was indicated by extending the hands horizontally forwards and backwards
and passing one over the other so as to touch it once or twice; a man by a finger held up vertically;
running by first doubling the arm upon itself and then throwing the elbow backwards and forwards.

4. Out of these three instrumentalities of expression voice or tone has won to itself the chief and
almost exclusive part in communication.
How long man, after he came into such being as he now is physically and intellectually, continued
to communicate with signs is a question which is idle to try to answer even conjecturally. How the
first scanty and formless signs have been changed into the immense variety and fullness of existing
speech, it is impossible to point out because nearly the whole process is hidden in the darkness of
an impenetrable past.
Probably the man had to undergo the same labour in learning the speech which a child has now to
undergo in learning its mother-tongue with this difference that primitive man was a grown child
who painfully elaborated a language for himself whereas the individual child has but to acquire a
language already formed.
The Importance of Language:
Language is a constituent element of civilization. It raised man from a savage state to the plane
which he was capable of reaching. Man could not become man except by language. An essential
point in which man differs from animals is that man alone is the sole possessor of language. No
doubt animals also exhibit certain degree of power of communication but that is not only inferior
in degree to human language, but also radically diverse in kind from it.
Language is one of the most marked, conspicuous, as well as fundamentally characteristic of the
faculties of man. The importance of language for man and society cannot be minimised. As a
personal thing, language is not only a mode of communication between individuals but is also a
way for the expression of their personality.
Sociologically, language moulds the individual from infancy. The child comes to know most of
the things of the world through language.
The importance of language is essential to every aspect and interaction in our everyday lives. We
use language to inform the people around us of what we feel, what we desire, and
question/understand the world around us. We communicate effectively with our words, gestures,
and tone of voice in a multitude of situation. Would you talk to a small child with the same words
you would in a business meeting. Being able to communicate with each other, form bonds,
teamwork, and it’s what separates humans from other animal species. Communication drives our
lives and better ourselves.
Origins of why there are so many different languages has plagued scholars and linguistics for
centuries and will continue to puzzle them far beyond our lifetimes to come. In most cultures have

5. myths that there was a common language spoke among the people with a deity getting angry and
confusing the people or separating them from each other/segmenting the people to create their own
language. Prime examples of stories like this is the “Tower of Babel”, Hindu with the story of the
“Knowledge Tree”, and even Native Americans believing in a “Great Deluge(Flood)” separating
people and speech.
The importance of communication can be often overlooked. Even with the ability to communicate
with each other. Misunderstandings happen. Remember, communication is a two way street that
should be embraced and not ignored. Believe it or not, some people can be arrogant to believe they
can’t go to foreign countries without knowing anything of the language or culture of the people in
the places they visit. The importance of language is beneficial regardless if you do it for fun or for
your career or even just for personal travel.
They expect the indigenous people to accommodate them and know their language. The
importance of language isn’t much different no matter what your nationality is. Honestly, if you
were to study other languages you will find that most of them are actually pretty similar. Mainly
the differences are in alphabet, pronunciation, and grammar with the syntax generally staying the
same. We should use it to show our understanding of the cultures and lives of our fellow men in
other lands. We should go behind the outer shell and see the speaker beneath.
Part where the importance of languages really shines in business with companies trying to reach
global audiences and markets. More and more business leaders are recognize to compete you have
to have knowledge in many foreign languages. Knowledge of their language as well as their culture
shows that you respect the ideas that they bring to the table and you understand their needs and
wants better than somebody who does not have this background.
Additionally, there is the psychological aspect of direct communication during your business
transactions. Your clients will be more likely to trust what you are saying and there will be a more
intimate relationship than if you were to conduct all communication through a translator. This
could be an important step in building strong and lasting business relationships that help ensure
the success of your own business.
More and more school are recognizing the importance of language. Some schools begin offering
to teach a second language as early as middle school. Many schools and employers are requiring
specific language requirements as part of their application process.
Through language we can connect with other people and make sense of our experiences. Imagine
what it must be like for your child to develop these skills that we take for granted. As a parent,
teacher, or other type of caregiver, you shape a child’s language development to reflect the identity,
values, and experiences of your family and community.
Therefore, it is up to you to create a warm and comfortable environment in which your child can
grow to learn the complexities of language. The communication skills that your child learns early
in life will be the foundation for his or her communication abilities for the future. Strong language
skills are an asset that will promote a lifetime of effective communication.

6. I have always been interested in languages. Our language is the most important part of our being.
I think it is important to learn other languages besides our own because it helps us to learn about
other peoples and cultures but the most important one that we can learn is our own mother tongue
as this is one of the most basic parts of our identity. If we lose our own tongue, for example, when
we grow up in a country which is not our own, in my opinion, we are losing a part of ourselves.

It is an important attribute of his personality. Its importance to the society lies in the
following:
(i) Easy Social Contact:
Firstly, it makes social contact easy. Society, as we have seen, is a web of social relationships
which imply development of social contacts among the individuals with language contacts become
easy to be established because men can easily exchange their ideas. According to E. H. Sturtevant,
“A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by which members of a social group cooperate
and interact.
(ii) Culture-Carrier:
Secondly, language helps or hinders the spread of culture. Ideas require language. Sometimes an
idea or concept is hard to translate because the language has no words with which to express it.
We are facing this difficulty in our country because Hindi, our national language does not possess
terms for a number of English words used in sciences.
The Hindi linguists have coined some words to replace English as a medium of instruction. These
coined words are, however, more difficult to understand and remember than the English words.
Language conserves our culture which it passes to posterity. Language may be called culture-
carrier.
The culture that exists at a given time and place has come from the past and is the result of
accumulation of things, attitudes, ideas, knowledge, error and prejudice. The animals as we have
seen are incapable of speech except for a few sounds and so incapable of having any culture and
civilization. It is man alone who through language has acquired a high degree of culture and
civilization. As pointed out above it raised man from savage state to a noble state.
(iii) Easy Conveyance of Ideas:
Thirdly, language gives a capacity for conveying ideas about a great variety of things. In times
when there was no language the ideas were transmitted by signs or cries which were not easy to
interpret. Man felt great difficulty in the clear expression of states of emotion.

7. There was no uniformity of these signs or cries. Some of these signs were quite complicated, for
instance, ‘man’ was denoted- by extending the forefinger, the rest of the hand being shut, and
drawing a line with it from the pit of the stomach down as far as can be conveniently reached.
But with the invention of language now a number of ideas and states of emotion can be conveyed
in an easy and simple way. A language that could transmit an idea such as “the flood came and
destroyed the houses” through delicate variations in sound was an achievement far superior Lo the
transmission of ideas by a variety of cries.
Thus importance of language to society is clear. It has led man from mere clumsy animal to a
human being in the real sense of the word. It has simplified the conveyance of ideas, smoothed
social contacts, conserved our culture and transmitted it Lo posterity. In fact, language is very
valuable possession which has elevated man from the level of a savage to the plane of the ‘Lord
of Creation’.
Need for a Universal Language:
The people of different parts of the world speak different languages. Not only that, people living
in the same territory use different languages or speak different dialects. These differences in the
language of the people of the world have served to limit inter-group communication and perpetuate
social isolation.
Since language is a great medium of communication the assumption has been made that if the
people of the world have the same language it may help a great deal in removing the culture barriers
and bring the people of the world nearer to each other thereby serving the cause of international
understanding and cooperation.
No doubt, a universal language may help in the cultural unification of the people of the world and
remove misunderstanding that grow out of inability to communicate effectively, but the practical
difficulty is to find out such a language.
The proponents of different languages claim that ‘their language is better than any other language
and that it alone provides a more efficient means of communication that it is more explicit, more
logical, more flexible and far more easier to master.
Efforts have also been made to improve the existing languages, to make them more simplified and
logical. But as yet no universal single language has been agreed upon and consequently the

8. linguistic differences continue. It is also difficult for any people to learn more readily any other
language than the mother-tongue.