"Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary."
An exploration of the different languages and dialects spoken in a culture, how they developed, and their impact on cultural identity.
Linguistics: This is the scientific study of language, which includes its structure, history, and evolution.
Phonetics: This is the study of the sounds of language and how they are produced and perceived.
Phonology: This is the study of the rules governing sound patterns in language.
Syntax: This is the study of the rules governing the structure of sentences in language.
Semantics: This is the study of how meaning is conveyed through language.
Pragmatics: This is the study of how language is used in different social contexts.
Dialectology: This is the study of regional and social variations in language.
Sociolinguistics: This is the study of the relationship between language and society, including social factors like class, race, and gender.
Historical Linguistics: This is the study of how languages change over time.
Language acquisition: This is the study of how humans acquire language, both as children and as adults.
Language policy: This is the study of how language is regulated and promoted by governments and other organizations.
Language endangerment: This is the study of languages that are at risk of disappearing due to lack of speakers or institutional support.
Language contact: This is the study of how languages interact and influence each other, particularly in multilingual contexts.
Language and identity: This is the study of how language is tied to cultural identity, both individually and collectively.
Language and power: This is the study of how language is used to assert and maintain power within society.
English: One of the most widely spoken languages globally, with multiple dialects, including British, American, Australian, and Indian.
Spanish: A romance language, spoken widely in Spain, Latin America, and parts of North America.
Mandarin: A Sino-Tibetan language spoken widely in China, with over 1 billion speakers globally.
Arabic: A Semitic language spoken in the Middle East and Northern Africa, used in the Holy Quran, and recognized as the official language of 26 countries worldwide.
French: A Romance language spoken widely in France, Canada, and parts of Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
German: A West Germanic language spoken mainly in Germany, Austria, and parts of Switzerland.
Russian: An East Slavic language spoken primarily in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.
Portuguese: A Romance language spoken widely in Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, and some other parts of the world.
Japanese: An East Asian language spoken mainly in Japan, with a complex writing system and unique cultural nuances.
Korean: A language spoken mainly in North and South Korea and is considered an Altaic language family.
Italian: A Romance language spoken mainly in Italy, Switzerland, and parts of North and South America.
Hindi: An Indo-Aryan language spoken mostly in India, Nepal, and the Mauritius Islands.
Urdu: An Indo-Aryan language spoken in India and Pakistan, and has several dialects.
Bengali: An Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in Bangladesh and India, with over 200 million speakers globally.
Turkish: A language spoken mainly in Turkey and some other parts of the world, but also a Turkic language family.
Dutch: A West Germanic language spoken mainly in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname.
Persian: An Indo-European language spoken mainly in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan.
Swahili: A Bantu language spoken mainly in East Africa and is the official language of Kenya and Tanzania.
Yiddish: An old language spoken by Jews worldwide, it is a Germanic language that uses Hebrew scripts.
Catalan: A Western Romance language spoken mainly in Catalonia in Spain, but also in France, Italy, and some other parts of Europe.
"It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and written forms."
"The vast majority of human languages have developed writing systems that allow for the recording and preservation of the sounds or signs of language."
"Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time."
"Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences."
"The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning."
"Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000."
"In other words, human language is modality-independent, but written or signed language is the way to inscribe or encode the natural human speech or gestures."
"When used as a general concept, 'language' may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication."
"The scientific study of language is called linguistics."
"Critical examinations of languages, such as philosophy of language, the relationships between language and thought, how words represent experience, etc., have been debated..."
"Thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) have argued that language originated from emotions."
"Others like Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) have argued that languages originated from rational and logical thought."
"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 by approximately three years old."
"...language has social uses such as signifying group identity, social stratification, as well as use for social grooming and entertainment."
"Languages evolve and diversify over time, and the history of their evolution can be reconstructed by comparing modern languages..."
"A group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family."
"A language that has been demonstrated to not have any living or non-living relationship with another language is called a language isolate."
"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."