What is a language? That might seem like a weird question for me to be asking on a blog about language (and travel!). But the answer is actually pretty complicated.
See, every language emerged as a dialect of another language, slowly changing over thousands of years from whatever original protolanguage we all shared. There is a very fine, dotted line between dialect and language, and it’s harder to define than you might realize.
Of course, language change isn’t the only thing that makes that difficult. Cultural, social, and political definitions can change that around too. Let’s get into it!
What Defines a Language?
By most definitions, a language is separate from another if they aren’t mutually intelligible. This means that, for example, English and Spanish speakers cannot understand each other.
If people have two different ways of speaking, but can understand each other, then they’re speaking different dialects of the same language.
This is generally the agreed upon definition of a language, but, as any linguist will tell you, it doesn’t always work that way. The distinctions are often harder to make than we think, and can be changed by external forces, too.
Language Change
I’ve been reading a book over the last few days about how language changes, and how we went from one “common” language to over 7,000. (Not to mention all the thousands or hundreds of thousands of languages that have appeared and disappeared over time.)
It’s a complicated process, for sure. I’ll go over it a little bit here, but if you want more detail, John McWhorter’s book The Power of Babel is a very in-depth case study on the process.
A lot of it comes down to the way we pronounce things. Once certain sound changes or silent letters become the norm, it’ll lead to further changes along the way. This is a process that happens over the course of many generations, so we usually won’t even realize it’s happening.
Grammar
Grammar can change too, as we phase out old grammatical features or bring in new ones.
I talked a bit about this process in my post about Old English. The language has gone through some big changes over the last thousand years or so, right under our noses. English might seem complicated even as a native speaker, but learning Old English feels like learning an entirely separate language. (Because it pretty much is!)
We used to have many different noun forms: noun genders, endings to match their role in a sentence, and a plural form for each. Now, noun genders are gone, noun cases don’t exist, and we just have a singular and plural form for every word.
We’re also more strict about the order of words in a sentence. In Old English, we could move things around a bit, which allowed for some interesting poetic freedom. The object of a sentence could appear before the subject if it made the sentence flow better, for example.
Now, sentences always have to have the subject, then the verb, then the object. It helps us track who’s doing what without all those endings.
But these distinctions can only really be made retroactively, by looking back at how the language changed and finding the spot where it becomes unrecognizable by modern standards.
Dialects
So, where do we draw the line? What makes two languages separate? And how do dialects factor in?
Dialects are considered to be like a subgroup of a language. For example, British English, American English, and Australian English.
A British English speaker would call an elevator a lift, or a chip a crisp. They also pronounce everything differently, yet we can still understand them.
This is what makes a dialect a dialect and not a language. They change to reflect the culture of the speakers in that area, but can still be understood by speakers of other dialects. Just as the US has many subcultures, so does a language. But over time, these dialects will become more distinct until they’re separate languages.
Pidgins and Creoles
Pidgins are simplified ways of speaking that develop between groups that speak two separate languages without a common tongue. They bring in the vocabulary of one language, and maybe some from the other. The same thing happens with the grammar.
These start out as a simple way for the two groups to communicate, but eventually develop into a full-fledged language, with all of its complexities. This is the point when a pidgin becomes a creole.
Belizean Kriol is an example of the result of such a process. Despite English being Belize’s official language, Belizean Kriol is the most widely-spoken language in the country. It developed out of the interactions between British colonists, the Spanish, African Garifuna speakers, and even some Mayans. Speakers of these languages might recognize certain words or features, and might even understand certain parts of the language.
Still, Belizean Kriol is its own language. So, again, language can be a lot of things and can come from many different sources. The line between dialect and language can be incredibly vague.
Sociopolitical “Language”
Then there’s the influence of government.
If you thought it was confusing already, it’s about to get weirder.
I’ve mentioned a few times elsewhere on this blog that language can be used to influence people, and to unite or divide them. This can happen at the whims of a group or happen entirely beyond their control.
In Indonesia, for example, Bahasa Indonesia is the official and majority language (depending on the data you look at). It’s actually a dialect of Malay, though, which is spoken even beyond Indonesia’s borders. So, a dialect is being called a language here as a way of pushing a particular identity. It also facilitates easier communication between the people scattered across the country’s many islands, making unity more tenable.
In China, a similar process happens. You’ve probably heard people refer to the “Chinese” language. China often calls it that, too. But there are around 300 languages in China, many of them so different that they can’t understand a single word that the other speaks. For example, Cantonese is an entirely separate language from Mandarin, with different words and grammar. The Chinese government calls them all dialects as a way to foster unity among their people.
I hate to overwhelm you with examples, but there are just so many interesting ways this process can happen. Just one more, I promise.
Hindi and Urdu are considered separate languages. Urdu uses the Persian alphabet, Hindi uses the Devanagari alphabet. They write their words completely differently, and yet they can talk to each other without any language barrier. But because of cultural/ political shenanigans (and the Himalayas limiting their interactions), they’re considered separate languages.
Conclusion
Those were a lot of examples, but in this case I think it’s the easiest way to demonstrate why the definition is so complicated.
Ultimately, the common definition I gave above is still the norm, and the usual definition people use. But I think it’s important to know that such a definition isn’t as cut and dry as it might seem. Language is a constantly changing thing, and a rigid definition will never encapsulate everything.
In your language studies, remember that you might actually be learning more than you think!
I hope this was an interesting read! If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, make sure to leave them below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!
Is there anything you want to know about language? Let me know below!
Thanks for reading!
