Language is used in the entire universe but what does language mean? How does it work? Why are we using them? When do we use them? Well, language can be defined in many ways. According to House Webster’s College Dictionary; language means a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition: for example English language, Malay language and Japanese language. The dictionary also states that language is something that we use in communication where it has a system of arbitrary vocal sounds, written symbols, signs, or gestures in conventional ways with conventional meanings.
A language works as phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Phonetics is the study of the physical aspects of sound speech. It is divided by into three and they are articulatory, acoustic and speech perceptions. Articulatory phonetics is how sounds are produced in the vocal tract while acoustic phonetics relates sounds and the way people hear things for example synonyms while speech perception is how sounds being perceived and interpreted by listeners. While phonetics is the study of physiological of sound speech, phonology is the study of the patterning sounds in languages. Patterning sounds here means what sounds does a language use, the relationships between the sounds and the distribution of the sound. In simple words it is where a few sounds are combined together and produced a word for example, ‘H’ and ‘au’ produces ‘how’. Then in language also has syntax. Syntax;is the discipline that examines the rules of a language that dictate how the various parts of sentences go together. We can see this while learning grammar. It is also being used for the purpose of to make sense out of a sentence whereas semantics is the study of the relation between form and meaning or in other words the study of meaning. Idioms and proverbs are some examples for it while pragmatics acts as the study of the aspects of meaning and language use that are dependent on the speaker,the addressee and other features of the context of utterance. We can use pragmatics when we want to say something that isn’t giving a positive reaction with polite words. This is because pragmatics is the aspects of utterance meanings of words do not follow directly from the literal meanings of words and their combination. Other than in writing, speaking also requires these terms in order for listeners to interpret and understand the whole meaning of what the speaker trying to say.
Like the third question above, “why do we use language?”. Well, there are several purposes in language and each of them differs in the sense of meaning. Using language, we work, play and even make money out of it for instance Tom teaches English language for primary school children. He works the language by simplifies the bombastic words in order for the children understand better, he plays with the language by directing a school play and he earns money by using the knowledge of language he has. Other than that, we court and seduce, buy and sell, insult and praise, all by means of language. So, a language is not restricted only inside a classroom but also in our daily activities.
The last question is “when do we use language?”. Basically we apply language in our daily lives. We start to use language since we were brought up to the world. During several years which is when we were babies the first few words that being taught by our parents are “mama” or “papa” because it is a way of communication between parents and baby. The number of words increases day by day until we know how to converse in a full sentence. Language is needed during conversations and writings to communicate with other people. Other than that language is also being used in order to entertain, giving information and convince our listeners or readers to understand what has been said and able to reply without any puzzlement.
In a nutshell, language is wide and not restricted to only a group of people because it has been used by the entire humanity in the world. Language works because there are several rules that help to build and beautify the sentences that we use. With the help of grammar, people should have a good understanding and able to converse without any misunderstandings.
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