What is Language

Before the reading, if someone ask me what is language, I will tell him that language is the ability to use a complex system of communication to express feelings, and languages are totally different from each other and arbitrary. There exist 5000-7000 kinds of languages in the world now. But, after the reading, I will say everything could be language, there must be millions of ways to express thoughts. Not only the languages, spoken or signed, can be language; all those auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli to the brain can also be languages. “It is a abundantly clear that the brain is organized in terms of numerous interacting areas that together determine our experience of the world and our intentions to act.” (Jackendoff, 130)

Brain is like a CPU, the input are all kinds of stimuli, and the output depends on the things you familiar with. All man are born equal, yes,it is also true to a linguist. A 8-month-old baby can have the ability to identify all the different existing pronunciations, there are more than 800 pronunciations! But later, if his brain stop being stimulated by the particular sound, he will lose this ability. A Chinese-Speaker cannot pronunciate /l/ sound and /rrrr/ sound, without training. A Japanese-speaker cannot tell the differences between /r/ and /l/, my english-speaking classmates cannot pronunciate my name……

So long as there is an input, stimuli to the brain, the brain can help us to feel this world.

Here is also another interesting device. BrainPort device, created by Wisconsin-based Wicab, Inc., consists of a pair of sunglasses with an embedded camera, a hand-held CPU, and an electrode-laden paddle which sits on the user’s tongue which is placed on the user’s tongue. The camera will capture the visual information, transfer them into electric impulses and stimulate the brain through the tongue.

Besides, output methods can be various. I think we all had inner voice sometimes, which means we can think in words. Some people may curious about how deaf people think in words. Actually, blind people’s dream may contain those feelings, so deaf people can think in those gestures and signs. So it doesn’t matter which language is your mother tongue, we all think in f-language, or f-mind.

Language can exist in everywhere.