Language

 Part One

Answer the following question. (Write the answers in your notebooks)

1.     What is language?

2.     Why does each language have different words for different things?

Ni hao! Privyet! Aloha! Jambo! ¡Hola!

Do you know what these words mean? They are “hello” in five different languages—Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Hawaiian, Swahili, and Spanish. If you wanted to be able to say hi to everyone in the world in their own language, you would have to learn thousands of different versions of this word!

DIFFERENT LANGUAGES, DIFFERENT WORDS

Language is how people communicate with one another. It’s a terrific tool. Language is spoken. It is also written down. Sign language—used by many people who are deaf—is communication with gestures. We do most of our communicating by speaking.

To talk with the most people in the world, you need to know Chinese. It is the world’s most widely spoken language. More than 1.2 billion people speak Chinese. Arabic is second and then Hindi, with English in fourth place. Other languages in the top ten are Spanish, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, and German.

Every language has different words for things. Why is the four-legged animal that barks called a dog in English? There’s no reason for it. It’s just an accepted custom among speakers of English. In Spanish dog is perro, and it is sobaka in Russian and inu in Japanese.

New Words and Expressions

version noun [ count ]

a form of something

the latest version of the software

synonym: type, kind

gesture 1 noun [ count ] اشاره

a movement of your head or hand to show how you feel or what you want

The boy made a rude gesture before running off.

gesture 2 verb اشاره کردن

to point at something or make a sign to someone

She asked me to sit down and gestured toward a chair.

custom noun [ count ]

something that a group of people usually do رسم، سنت

the custom of giving gifts at Christmas

It’s a local custom.

synonym: tradition, practice