Communication is complicated, whether its crabs showing that they're healthy or dolphins using their clicks and whistles to convey simple message.
For the human languages, you probably know a few of them (what they are, not how to speak), but you probably don't know a lot of animal languages.
For example, cuttlefishes use their pigmented skin to camouflage or warn enemies by changing their colours, and bees use elaborate dances to tell the location and quality of a food source.
Even though these are impressive for animals, they don't show the qualities of a language, namely, discreetness, grammar, productivity and displacement.
Discreetness means there is a set of units that can be combined to convey complex messages.
Grammar is the rules that tell you how to use these units.
Productivity is the ability to make an infinite number of outputs using the language.
Last but not least, displacement is the ability to talk about things that are not in front of you like the past, the future or fictional events.
Do animals exhibit any of these properties? The answer is yes for some animals but no for others, but intriguingly, none of them show all four of these properties, so none of them count as real languages.
How and when did human language evolve? There is no saying for sure, but there are two theories of how it all started.
The first is that language started as grunts, and slowly transitioned to the style of verbal communication we know today. The second is that language began as sign language, and transition to spoken language.
To me, the first theory makes more sense because how do you transition from hand signs to verbal communication.
What do you think? Do you think we grunted, hooted and yelled or evolved from hand signs?
You may think that the English we speak today are the same as the English we spoke 400 years ago, but the truth is it isn't. Language changes as it mixes in with different cultures and religions.
Today the most common language is English, in both the number of people and countries that speak this language.
You need to communicate for almost anything from texting your friend to making a Minecraft video. If you are a scientist, writing a report is communicating what information you have gathered and what conclusion you have drawn.
If life didn't learn to communicate, nothing would be here, not even you, except for some simple single-celled organisms. Because if your body cells couldn't communicate, they wouldn't be able to form complex structures like organs and tissue.
All in all, knowing how to communicate well is a very important skill, whether to convince others, to influence or to write and report on PewDiePie.
注：discreetness, grammar, productivity and displacement这四个词原本的意思是慬慎性、语法、创造性、位移(时空上的转换), 但是在语言学中有专门的意义, 所以在大通的作文里用简单的句子描述了每个词在语言学中的意义。比如there is a set of units that can be combined to convey complex messages就是discreetness在语言学中的意思。
大通最喜欢的科目是数学，最不喜欢的是语言，不管是英文、法语还是中文，都学得很勉强。所以，我希望他思考一下沟通(或语言)是什么，到底重不重要。这篇短文，内容不算多，其实可以再增加一些现代日常生活中的沟通技巧例子。但不管怎么样，他总算是认识到，语言是很重要的，需要好好学习。
作者：大通，加拿大，五年级
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