Language is human speech, either spoken or written. Language is the most common system of communication. It allows people to talk to each other and to write their thoughts and ideas. The word language may be loosely used to mean any system of communication, such as traffic lights or Indian smoke signals. But the origin of the word shows its basic use. It comes from the Latin word lingua, meaning tongue. And a language still is often called a tongue.
Wherever there is human society, there is language. Most forms of human activity depend on the cooperation of two or more people. A common language enables human beings to work together in an infinite variety of ways. Language has made possible the development of advanced, technological civilization. Without language for communication, there would be little or no science, religion, commerce, government, art, literature, and philosophy.
According to linguists (scholars who study language), there are about 6,000 languages spoken in the world today. This number does not include dialects (local forms of a language). Many languages are spoken only by small groups of a few hundred or a few thousand people. There are more than 200 languages with a million or more speakers. Of these languages, 27 have about 50 million or more speakers each: Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Malay-Indonesian, Mandarin, Marathi, Min, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Wu.
Young children quickly acquire command of a language when they have regular contact with fluent speakers of that language. Children listen to older people, imitate them, and gradually master a group of sounds used in the language. They also learn to associate particular words, such as "dog," "black," or "bark," with objects, ideas, and actions. At the same time, youngsters learn to make up sentences that other speakers accept as correct.
By the age of 5 or 6, children usually have a command of the basic sound and grammatical patterns of their native language. They are then able to communicate well enough for most of their own practical purposes. In school, they learn how to express themselves more precisely both in speaking and writing about more complex matters.
