An Anatomy of Language

If you are not intrigued form the above title consider this: the reason behind the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear-attack was the wrong interpretation of a Japanese word. The reason behind the invention of Fax Machine (it was invented in Japan) was the language, because Chinese/Japanese language doesn’t comprise of alphabets, it is rather a picture language, so if you want to make a Chinese typewriter then it will consist of more than 50,000 characters(yes, four zeros). ‘Sanskrit’ is the oldest language of world.

What is Language? It hard to define what ‘language’ is. But it is easily acceptable that the Languages are basically for communication purpose. The language could be in many forms, but our conventional concept of language is comprised of four forms spoken, listened, read, written (say Natural Language, English, gujarati etc. ). But the language is not that much only. When a child becomes hungry and points to refrigerator or his mouth and we understand what he wants, what do you do along with wishing “best of luck”, or “all the best” to your friends in exam-hall? You may call it Body Language.

So it is clear that we have two ways for communicating with each other one is above mentioned Natural Language the other way is by using Body Language. As one can understand that the birth of any language can not be spontaneous rather it is invented, developed, modified by people over a huge span of time. The pronunciation style is also greatly affected by natural climate when it is created gradually. (E.g. there is a huge difference between Indian and American dialect). So one may argue that how came we choose Natural Language over Body language as our communication mean (the advantage of body language:-it can be made global, same gesture can be made across the globe if you want to say you are hungry) . It is because verbal language requires much less muscle movement, when movement of hand and fingers etc.. requires more muscle movement. So choosing any Natural language is economical in terms of energy usage. But the dumb people have to choose the uneconomical way.

One point is also about use of sophisticated language in oral form, the language you may find in dictionaries or in news papers. Personally I hate to use the sophisticated language, because the so called formal or sophisticated lang. has restricted the use of pre-linguistic words (want to know what are pre-linguistic words? Then prick a needle on your butt and the spontaneous word you will utter comes under this category). I firmly say that any language is not the possession of any litterateur or any Oxford or Cambridge dictionary, language representation doesn’t need any authentication. The richness of pre-linguistic or informal words in your language enhances acuteness of your expression, and of course that is the ultimate aim of mankind ….

“Poetry is the mother-tongue of mankind”

-Anonymous