LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD

ANIMALS CAN COMMUNICATE, BUT THEY OPERATE AT THE LEVEL OF THE CODE. They exchange displays, like the dance of honeybees, but these are messages with a fixed meaning. Alone among God's creations, humans are blessed to comprehend language. Instead of exchanging dispalys, we exchange words -- one word for another, in an endless chain of signifcation. The chain of signification only ends when it hits a master signifier.

Language provides the basis for discourse, and the realization of consciousness. Grammar in turn provides the rules for socialization and subjectivation.

The word stock of a language is said to be its lexicon. Lexicon and grammar combine to make a language. For example, many languages make use of a copula to link the lexicon together. In Japanese, it is desu. In English, the copula is the verb be.

There are many languages in this crowded world, but they all fulfil the same purpose.

In Papua New Guinea, you can walk into a new language area every day.

AUSTROASIATIC

» Vietnamese

AUSTRONESIAN

SPOKEN BY nearly 400 million souls across the islands of maritime south-east Asia and the Pacific Ocean, Austronesian is one of the largest language families in the world. Some of its unique features include reduplication of words and widespread use of affixes.

» Bahasa Indonesia

INDOEUROPEAN

ORIGINATING FROM the steppes of Russia, the Indo-European family includes three of the world's top five languages in terms of speakers (Spanish, English and Hindi)... (For more on Indo-European,

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GERMANIC GROUP

» Dutch
» English
» Icelandic

ROMANCE GROUP

» Spanish

SEMITIC

» Arabic

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