Today I wanted to talk to you about the thing called language. To do this, let's break it apart and try to understand each idea on its own.
To start with, the first question I ask is, what is language? When looking around the world, various languages, be it a human languages, animal languages, artificial languages, even body language. They all seem to have one thing in common, and that is it is a means to communicate.
When you look at the form of a given language takes, you will notice some will use what we call words which derive from letters. Others will use pictographs, while others will use symbols or gestures. These languages tend to take these representations and form them together by specific rules to create a formula of sorts that describes a particular concept.
The act of communication is typically between one or more entities, and technically it could be one entity communicating to itself. In its most straightforward form, communication is the act of transmitting an understanding. Language is the vehicle or medium that is used for that communication. Successful communication is when the desired concept is conveyed; this is called an understanding.
In other words, language is a tool used for communicating concepts.
If this is true, then what is essential about language? The importance of something lies in its purpose. After all, if something has no purpose, it has no importance. So in the notion of language, it's entire reason to exist is to communicate the desired concept or meaning of something. Thus the importance of language is communicating.
To summarize before going further. I am arguing that language is the medium that conveys conceptual understanding. I argue that the purpose of language is to serve as a means to communicate. In other words, languages are tools.
Why are there different languages? Each language has it's limitations on what it is good at and what it can convey. Just like each tool has it's specialty, each language does as well.
When communication is necessary, the context will determine the scope required for transacting the discussion, which will dictate which language or languages will work. Example hand gestures over a phone call with voice-only transmission are not useful for communication. But hand gestures in person might be. In that example, the context is the phone call with a limitation of being voice-only transmission, which will eliminate the ability to use languages that do not use sound.
It is crucial to choose a language that is appropriate for the context of the desired communication.