When I heard that there was a session about language for an
entire day, the immediate thought that floated across my head was “A session on
language for the whole day, how much can be learnt that we don’t already know?”
Little did I know that I was foraying into the amazing world of words and
languages where everything that seemed mundane and ordinary had much deeper
secrets to be unfolded.
Language for me has always been the ladder used to climb to
the higher worlds of Sciences and Mathematics. Which precisely explains why I
would never really open my English or hindi book for studying because for me
neither of these languages had anything new to offer. Once you have read a story,
you know what there is in it and there would end my ordeal with the subject. I
would rather use that time studying Maths or Science that appeared more mentally
stimulating.
But the session on linguistics pretty much changed all that
I had ever perceived since the last 15 years which is long enough time to think that what you believe is what
is right. The different languages spoken in our country have always intrigued
me. I knew that various languages and dialects borrow words from each other
freely specially those having geographical proximity. But never once did I know
or even tried to know that there was common thread running across all languages
of the world.
The consonantal and vocalic sounds common to most languages of
the world was a fantastic revelation on its own. In fact the fact that all languages can be
represented by means of one single script is something that I always knew. But I
had never paid heed to these simple things that hugely simplify means of
communication across boundaries. The
tasks with plurals and constructing negatives and questions in different languages gave me fascinating
new insights.
The most fascinating
of them being how closely mathematics and languages can be linked. I always thought that mathematics was the
most logical subject and English the most illogical one. You either knew it or
you didn’t. But with the play with sound structures I realized how logical
English plurals are. You can actually construct a theorem that can be applied
to almost words English. In fact not just English we actually formulated a
common rule with negatives and questions across 30 languages.
I learnt amidst the rich diversity across nations and
languages, there lies a common thread that binds them all, that was always
there but I was too ignorant to notice it.
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