Don´t have words

PUBLIC_FLAG_#{@journal.pf_int} RSS feed of linkf1's latest journal entries May 25th 2011 01:43

There are more than 5000 languages in the world and none of them is exactly a copy of other. All languages share tons of characteristics; they have verbs, adjectives, adverbs, a subject, pronouns, nouns, etc. But when you compare languages in a deeper level their differences make a huge difference.
Languages are close related or not event related because of the language they come from. Ones come from Latin and others from Germanic but even when they come from different languages they share quite a lot of aspects. I personally think they all come from a common language nobody has ever discovered.
When somebody wants to learn a language, they use their native tongue in order to learn a second language so they have the basis to build on the structure of a new language. Yet the main problem lies in some aspects languages do not share at all. It may be that one language locates its verbs at the end of the sentence while the other set them at the very beginning of the sentence. Some languages may not have articles and instead they use particles to cover this problem which at the end is not a problem but the way that language works.
Culture is close related to languages, because somehow culture is created by culture and culture is built in language. So, the way people think is the way they see the world that surround them through language.
No one would see a world if they do not have a language first, due to the lack of previous knowledge. Without the word “table” and the phonetic sound /(tā´bəl)/ this person could never know that this object (the table) is a table itself. He may call it by his own personal way but what he would be doing in that moment is creating a language for himself in order to name things.
Concordantly, language is a social aspect the human life, and the agreement of use is something that people should do in order to settle a official language. All the population of certain place should agree that table is “an article of furniture supported by one or more vertical legs and having a flat horizontal surface.” So everyone could communicate and talk about tables.
But we all agree that in this world as, as we told before, there is not only one language and what is a table in English is a “mesa” in Spanish and “テーブル” (teeburu) in Japanese and none of them share even the same words.
Then how do these words mean the same but they are written using different characters? The answer is quite simple, language have they own words to name things, as simple as that. If a language would use words from other language to name every of its items, it may use as well use the same grammar and syntax and the result would be two identical languages which will end in a fusion of them and the creating of, not a new language, the same language.
That is why languages are so different and with it the way people sees the world.
As we said before, language share common characteristics but as they do this, they also have differences not only in their structure but in their vocabulary as well and this creates problems when learning languages. Let’s say we have a word for “dad” in English and we use it just like that, to name the person we grew up with, who teach us what we know and who we consider our father. So we call “dad” that person, using examples such as: my dad, his dad, her dad, etc. But what happens when we want to learn the Japanese word for “dad”? Well, we face the problem that they do not only have one word for “dad” but many. All depending in the social status, the respect and the closeness you have with that person. So here we have the same person who we would call “dad” in England or United States but that in Japan we should call him “ちち” (chichi), “あふ” (afu), “だいふ” (taifu), “ちちおや” (chichioya), “とうさん” (toosan), “おとうさま” (otoosama), “おとうさん” (otoosan), etc.
The later aspect does not mean the Japanese have more fathers than we do, but that they have different ways to call him taking in consideration details to name him that way. It can be if he is my father or is the father of my friend, or if it is the father of my new friend. All these characteristics are fully taken in consideration when Japanese people talk but when we do we just skip not because we lack the knowledge to notice them but because in “our world” we do not see this aspects in such a general and important way.
Not only we can talk about single items of vocabulary, but let´s imagine we have two people talking about colors, a type of red color to paint one the people´s house. Then one of them says: I want the color red that we see every day when the sunsets. That sentence “the color red that we see every day when the sunsets” could be described in Japanese with only one word but not necessarily using such a long sentence. Why is this? Because Japanese may see this color using one word because in “their world” that color does not reflects the sunset but just a color.
Japanese language has no difference between the colors blue and green and it is not that they do not have those two colors because they have them, but it is just that they have one single word to describe both (aoi). Maybe because of the globalization they needed at some point to create a word to make a difference (midori) but it was because of necessity and not self creation that they did.
I personally think our language do not lack of word to describe things or have more words to describe things, it is just the way people see the word the way they call things. It is their necessities what makes them create new words or have words to call thing we may not even need. But when we do, we may use a previous created word or just invent one for ourselves.

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