Language is the language of a social group.
Language (which comes from the Latin word idioma ) is the language of a social group. The etymology of the term takes us to a Greek word that can be translated as "private property."
This question of property is linked to the fact that a language is a communication system , made up of words and/or gestures, which is typical of a community. When these systems have the characteristic of mutual intelligibility, we speak of a dialect or the linguistic variety of the same language.
Languages in the world
Specialists believe that there are about 6,000 languages around the world . This number may vary depending on the definition of language (regarding the differences between a new language or a dialect of an existing language), regions of the world that have not been investigated to analyze the speech of communities (as in the case of the Amazonian tribes) and the discovery of speakers who have knowledge of a language that was believed to be already extinct.
A language family , on the other hand, is a group of languages that are linked by history and that derive from a language of greater antiquity. The diversification into different dialects ended up generating new languages that cannot understand each other despite their common roots.
Learning languages can contribute to professional success.
The learning
The educational center that is dedicated to training students to learn to speak a foreign language is known as a language laboratory . These rooms usually have audiovisual resources to facilitate teaching. It is important to keep in mind that learning a second language is vital to succeed in today's competitive world of work.
However, given the characteristics of most current educational systems, learning a language can be a challenge that is impossible to overcome for certain people. Militarized teaching, which places the teacher in a higher position than the students, generating an almost biblical picture of an enlightened person who comes to communicate his divine wisdom to the people , usually produces more failures than successes and many are unable to overcome their fears. that the many humiliating experiences they experienced during their school years caused them.
Difficulties when learning a language
In the particular case of language teaching, there is the extra risk of learning with a person who is not native to the place where the language in question is spoken and who has never actually lived there; As a consequence, it is likely that he will pass on to his students the vices and confusions typical of someone who has a very limited and particular vision of a culture, obtained through the Internet, books , cinema, television, music and video games.
Nothing can compare with direct contact with a country, with its people, its customs, the incredible diversity of accents and idioms that exist in many cases, the different uses of words; Academic learning is important, but without complementing it with reality, it simply results in deception, in believing that one knows, and not in knowing.
Common confusions
Another obstacle when studying a foreign language is the terms known as "false brothers", whose writing or form is similar in two or more languages, although their meaning and use are completely different and, sometimes, almost opposite. This usually generates a lot of confusion in people who do not have natural gifts for learning a language, and feeds the erroneous perception that many individuals have of "thinking they understand."
As a result of these deceptive similarities, it is often easier to learn a language very different from one's own (or those known to one) than a similar one. The reason is that our brain will not be able to take any shortcuts when storing new words and their meanings, since it will not find an apparent relationship between the new word and the closest equivalent in the base language.