Daily Times

Imagine mankind living in caves 100,000 or so years ago, a time when mankind had not learnt to communicate efficiently with each other. A language had not developed. Actions were used to communicate. It was during such times that one man walked into a dark cave in search of shelter, but there was someone living in that cave already. It was dark and also they were unable to communicate. Not knowing what the other man wanted, the man inside threw a stone at the intruder’s head as a way of letting him know not to be in there. This incident provoked anger from either side and resulted in violence. Both got hurt and died after a few weeks because of the fatal injuries they mindlessly inflicted upon each other. Both did not really understand what the other person intended. Similar examples have been quoted by many linguists, anthropologists, sociolinguists, ethno-linguists, and linguistic anthropologists to prove the importance of verbal communication in humans.

A language is a key vehicle in discussions and disagreements without which humans would most possibly cease to exist. It may not have the power to abolish all or most violence prevalent today in mankind but definitely has the power to provide and express one’s point of view or purpose behind an action or intention. Needless to say that only after understanding the problem fully one can find a commonly sustainable solution. A language thus differentiates humans from animals because other known systems of communication used by animals such as in bees or apes are closed systems that consist of a closed number of possible things that can be expressed. The development of human language from a closed system used by cavemen into a complex system most probably coincided with the enlargement of the human brain and when it became a unique mode of communication with its ability to provide productivity, recursivity and displacement.

Development of a language relies on social conventions, interactions and mutual learning in a group of people. Use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture and thus humans start speaking a language fluently when they are approximately three years old. Parents always want their children to learn the language they themselves had been using in their homes. This shows that in addition to being a communicative system, language also has a social and cultural significance. It differentiates a group of people from other groups of people speaking other languages and even dialects or varieties of the same language. Today, we have about 7,000 languages spoken in the world. Papua New Guinea alone has about 820 spoken languages. Indonesia has about 750, Nigeria 516 and India being the fourth in the world with 427 spoken languages.

It is a known fact that linguistic differences have become responsible for divisions between social groups. Speaking a different language or speaking with a particular accent may imply membership of an ethnic minority or a social class or different origin. These differences encourage humans to use language as a social tool for constructing groups and sub-groups and creating identities and sub-identities.

A gradual change in the syntax, vocabulary or morphology of a language is inevitable as speakers frequently adopt or invent new ways of speaking and pass them on to other members of their speech community. It is also worth noting that many languages have gone nearly extinct in the last few decades and the number has almost reached a total of 500. The primary reason that could be attributed to extinction of these languages is a lack of strong following in the shape of a large social group. A change in the language is viewed differently by different people of the group, where some may welcome the change and others may consider it a negative process of decay. People from different professions speak the same language differently. People from different political affiliations would frequent a common set of expressions in their speech. Various social classes try to stand out by using different phrases and vocal variations. The changes are caused in a language even by the way men and women speak the same language. A close study of variations in any language would show that the every language is continuously being evolved and a linguistic group lets the change occur without even noticing it despite the fact that resistance to any obvious change is criticised harshly.

(To be continued)

FairWorld101 is an alias for a Pakistani blogger who is a freelance writer for various national and international newspapers on global social and cultural subjects and the author of A Tale of Twenty Two Cities, 1997, on adventure travel photography about his experiences from road travel between Pakistan and Germany