Do all languages express the same meanings?

Every language is able to express the same basic ideas and concepts. The caveat is that languages individually convey an ideology of the people to whom the language belongs; each language is a reflection of the cultural understanding of the topic or idea at hand.

What can distinguish a language from a dialect?

In popular usage, a language is written in addition to being spoken, while a dialect is just spoken.

Do dogs understand human language?

The canine ability to comprehend human body language and intonation is amazing. Our dogs know more than just “Sit” or “Stay” or “Walk”. They can learn the meaning of many words and can grasp that meaning even better when we say those words in an appropriate tone.

What is the difference between words in English and other languages?

Words in some languages always finish with a vowel, while words in other languages must not have two consonants together. In English, for example, there are some sounds that cannot occur in particular parts of the word. The sound we make at the end of the word ‘sing’ does not occur at the beginning of words in English.

Are all dialects the same language?

All of them are simply dialects—even though the ones on the ends are not mutually intelligible and don’t feel like the same “language” to their speakers. Speech worked this way from village to village across Western Europe until recently, when unwritten, rural dialects started steadily disappearing.

How different is the Chinese language from other languages?

But the only single “Chinese” language that exists is on paper, in that all of its varieties have the same writing system, where each word has its own symbol that (more or less) stays the same from one Chinese “dialect” to another. Mandarin and Cantonese, for example, are more different than Spanish and Italian.

How are the sounds in a language related to each other?

There are also specific ways the sounds in a language can be put together in a word. In linguistics this is called ‘phonotactics’. Words in some languages always finish with a vowel, while words in other languages must not have two consonants together.