Language and Culture
Language is a way of communication which based on a systematic set of symbols and signs. Each language is produced by a group of people who live together and experience similar life patterns. At the very beginning, languages may created for multiple functions beyond communication. For example, the first language appeared in ancient China, Oracle Bone Script, was not created for everyday use by most commoners but for divination of war and agriculture used by priest. However now most languages all over the world have a common purpose to communicate with each other and express their emotions. Another very important purpose pf languages is that they give people a special way to describe how they perceive the world. For instance, in contrast to people, animals have only a way to communicate called call system which can only express emotion or information currently appear but language has no limitations to describe things whether visible or invisible, tangible or non-tangible and in the past or in the future.
This feature of language makes it has a mutual effect with culture. I think culture can be illustrate through language. On the other hand, culture determine how a language form in some extent. There are about seven thousands different languages all over the world. The reason for such a huge amount of languages is that each language’s users experience the world differently. There are many factors make this differences. Nature environment is an important factors. People live near equator must see a different world to people live in polar region. The animals and plants are different in each ecosystem. Even the color of the sky is different from their perspective. These disparities influence people’s way to perceive the world. And languages are used by people to describe the world, therefore languages are influenced by and also served to reflect these differences.
In turn language also can shape the world in some extent. Every child learned their mother language from early age. So their way to think and to form their thoughts largely influenced by the language. For example, in both English and Chinese there are words and grammars to express tense. So people who speak Chinese and English have the concept of future, present and past. But in some languages in the world, there is no ways to inflect this concept, therefore people who speak these languages have no idea of what time to do something. The concept of time is fade in their mind. So I suppose that people speak different languages may do thing differently.
People’s specific behaviors and ways to thing are all parts of their unique culture. Language is also an important component of a culture. What makes language special to a culture is that it is a way to load the culture. If the language of a culture disappears, the culture will also disappear.
