Actions Speak Louder Than Words: The Significance Of Language

INTRODUCTION

Nothing will ever surpass the ability to understand what others are trying to say and to communicate clearly. Often, you’ll hear people say action speaks louder than words, does it not? Speaking from a figurative context maybe it does but, the action says less. Imagine an event where there are ten colourful marbles and you are supposed to pick one that is red. Then “action takes place” I point to the marbles, would you understand what I want you to do, or what marble to pick from the pack? I bet you would not simply because you would not understand my action, as if I may put it action is “indirect” and incomplete form of communication. Which is why I propose that the greatest invention ever made was language, both spoken and written. Language, as defined by the Advanced English Dictionary, is a systematic means of communicating using sounds or conventional symbols.

In the scenario proposed above the first problem was clearly communicating to the other person what I wanted him to do and the second problem (faced by the person) was to understand what I was trying to communicate. Often this would have led to conflicts between people as we see misunderstandings do nowadays. What could have been done to clearly communicate and therefore create an understanding to someone you wanted to communicate with? This problem was still to trouble generations until language came to rescue. Language as simple as it is, it seems to have slowly developed over several generations and altered to perfection by each generation.

HOW THE DISCOVERY(S) MAY HAVE COME TO BE?

There have been various theories proposed by linguistics to try and explain how spoken language came to be being. In the 1860s a historical linguist Max Muller proposed a number of theories which give credible speculation as to how language came to being. He proposed the Cuckoo theory, which suggested that early words by humans were the imitations of birds and beasts in the wild. Given the fact that we are from the wild and we lived with these beasts and birds that can be true. Then the was the pooh-pooh theory which suggests that first words were emotional interjections and exclamations triggered by pain, surprise and pleasure. No one is taught how to scream when feeling pain, or use interjections when surprised, it is all reflex. One can argue on the validity of Mullers pooh-pooh theory as it seems convincing. Sir Charles Darwin also said it best when he said I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries. Even if the discovery was made by chance the by early Homo Sapiens they surely made a significant invention that would withstand the test of time and further advance.

The discovery of written language (writing) was to follow and further developed the human civilization in general. It's is basically the expression of language through letters and marks. Written language was developed independently in different places and at different times. In Sumer, Mesopotamia written language emerged around 3500 BC, in Egypt around 3100 BC and in the Sheng Dynasty of China around 1200 BC. People of Sumer intensely focused on farming and therefore had lots of cattle and farm materials, they had to keep track of what got in and what got out. A slab of clay was used by people monitoring the entrance and exit of farm materials. They would draw symbols on the slabs of clay to represent the farm materials. Over time the people who monitored these materials developed more symbols to represent the farm materials. Then they started linking the symbols to various sounds and hence communicate things more clearly.

HOW THIS DISCOVERY FUNCTIONS

To explain how people, communicate through language we would have to borrow from Biology to explain how it all works. It generally has to do with how we speak, hear and do as instructed and finally how we use our hands to grip writing material and write.

To speak, our brain needs to quickly and precisely coordinate your lips, jaw, tongue and larynx (voice box). When the brain moves air from our abdomen it controls the opening of our voice box and the waves created have varying frequencies and amplitude for every spoken word. These waves exit our mouths as sound or spoken words. Then the listener uses various parts of ears and captures the varying frequencies and amplitudes. The sound waves pass through various membranes of the ear, they are amplified and finally gets to the brain and are interpreted by our brains as sound and common words.

We, humans, have been modified to have a grip known as the precision grip, this allows us to grab writing material. Through the use of various conventional signs, we can retrace letters and numbers which are in memory of our brains. Draw them on paper and someone who has once seen these words can access them from their memory box in the brain and perceive them as instructions of what to do. The brain is evidently the major role player in the development of language.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LANGUAGE

People see language as being a humble or an instinctive skill that can be taught to a three-year-old. Though seems so simple Its existence goes far beyond. Language has allowed us to clearly express ourselves to other people and capture phenomenal moments of the past and the passing of significant cultures.

With the uprising of language all then followed. The naming of objects, animals and the naming of people. After the discovery of spoken language things could be done with much more ease as you would no longer point out what you need, but you call out its name and if you want a person you would call out their name. With the discovery of written language this meant that one could now capture large amounts of information and could review it all later since the flesh often forgets.

Language has enabled us access to religion. All the modern scriptures we refer to for guidance nowadays were kept in ancient buildings and written in rocks. People have managed to keep the sacred information and practices which have given birth to religions through the written language.

Our modern-day spoke and written languages particularly English was developed in the 14th century (the 1500s) and has evolved to its modern form that we speak nowadays. Both spoken and written languages have great significance and have led to the development of various structures.

Language has allowed us knowledge of historical events, ensuring that we forever know our roots and descendants. Language allowed people to give names to common everyday things, actions and feelings.

Written language has allowed us to keep historical records of events. This helped to preserve the history of an entire civilisation. These historical records help us sieve the facts from the not.

For knowledge promotion and its distribution, people learnt to organise language and distribute it through various systems. This gave birth to all schooling systems and universities to create a common understanding amongst all people. Language gave birth to science, mathematics, technology, economics and all other written things. In these institutions of knowledge-promotion spoken language is the main source of communication and written language is the main source of assessing

Language has played a major role in the amalgamation of people into various groups and has allowed the standardisation of common items among countries. Ever since the discovery of language till date, the number of spoken and written languages range between 6800 and 6900 with informal dialects included.

Spoken language has allowed development careers. Generally, every career uses some language to successfully communicate ideas to people. Some careers like journalism, book writing and reporting are directly linked to the use of language to convey messages to people. Which brings me to the next significant point. Every document, article, book, presentation, movie, recording ever made or will be made owes its existence to the invention of language.

Language has allowed the development of technological devices, this would, of course, include our laptops, smartphones, typing machines and others as these use the letters which are symbols developed through the written language. Various languages (python, javascript, C++) have also been developed for computers to process data.

CONCLUSION

From all the above-mentioned one can clearly conclude that It is impossible to imagine our schools and universities teaching, our scientists conducting and reporting research, our government governing or our civil service functioning without the written and spoken word. We would have never had any book written and only have knowledge of common things and not the complex. We would be perpetually involved in fights with people because of misunderstandings.

Language is the basic form of communication the has ever been and which has allowed us to effectively communicate our ideas and work in harmony with other people. To be able to speak up, write and understand the writing of others is a privilege that we ought to embrace as Homo Sapiens species. All the knowledge we have gathered thought out our entire lives were through language and speech.

We ought to thank our ancient ancestors who mimicked the sounds of birds and beasts, which forced our brains to produce speech through the vibration of our vocal cords. We ought to thank the data collection of farm cattle and other farm materials of the people of Mesopotamia we now have languages.