What's Special About Language?

06 January 2005

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Hello and welcome to Talking' About Talk. Members of the United States Senate have proposed 2005 as the Year of Languages in America. And this is the first in a series of programs to celebrate the year. So let's take a moment to think about language, a gift we ordinarily take for granted.

Have you ever wondered which language is the oldest? Or how babies learn to talk? Language is universal, and yet we have so many questions about it. Whatever happened to Esperanto? What makes Chinese hard to learn? Where did southern speech come from? Throughout the following weeks we'll explore all that and more and give you a chance to ask questions about language that may be on your mind.

Let me start with a big question. What's special about language? Well, what is it that makes us human? Is it walking on two legs or living in society? Is it our ability to love and hate? To some degree, all of those. But none is unique to the human species. Birds walk on two legs. Ants live in a society. The dog loves me and hates the cat next door. It's language that distinguishes us from all other creatures. Whatever people do when they are together, whether they play or fight, make love or serve hamburgers or build houses, they talk. We're the only creatures on the planet with the power of speech.

Every human being, rich or poor, is capable of language. Every child learns his or her native tongue, be it English or Zulu, just by being exposed to the talk around them. And they learn it equally well. Most children are fluent before they're ten years old, sometimes in more than one language. And as they grow up, they master different styles of speech. Everything from formal job interview talk to schoolyard slang.

Among the questions we'll be taking up is 'How can something as complicated as language be so easy for children to learn?' Many scientists think that certain areas of the brain specialize in language and that children are born with the capacity to learn any human language to which they are exposed. In other words, it's in our genes.

And let's not confuse language with what's on the written page. Children don't come into the world with an ability to read and write. Writing is a human invention. Spoken language is a biological trait. It's like the difference between riding a bike and walking. One has to be learned, the other comes naturally. And what comes naturally in the human species is talk.

Another thing we'll see is how much variety there is in the world's tongues and how constantly they change over time. There are thousands of languages on the planet all descended from earlier languages that spread and changed and split up into different dialects as people moved. Given enough time, separation of groups can even lead to new languages, the way French, Romanian and Spanish grew out of the Latin spoken by the Romans.

We'll also look at what linguists have discovered about how language began and whether it had more than a single beginning. There's no shortage of theories ranging from the supernatural to the imitation of animal sounds.

Oh, and do animals talk? Clearly apes and other animals communicate with each other and can be taught to do some language related tasks, but they lack the linguistic flexibility of humans, our amazing ability to express new thoughts without limits on subject matter.

So, what about computers? In some ways they're very smart but can we teach a machine to speak and understand like a human? Not quite. With some flashy imitations of human-like skills, computers are limited in their ability to understand and produce meaningful speech. And they certainly lack spontaneity and the creativity of human language. Think about it. Except for a few set phrases, such as curses or things you recite from memory like a poem or prayer, every time you speak, the sentence is unlike any other sentence you have ever spoken. Each one is unique. And everyday you create hundreds or even thousands of them. On reason language is special is that it is a universal form of human creativity. All humans are creative when it comes to talking. There is no human trait more pervasive, or more valuable, than language. It is capable of expressing all of human thought. Even thoughts about itself, which is what this radio series is all about.

That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Dr. Robert Rodman, linguistics professor in the computer science department at North Carolina State University. And this is the Five Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. If you'd like to ask a question about languages, go to our web site at www.cofc.edu/linguist. In the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do, language makes a difference.