What is a language? A language is, to some extent, a tool th | Professor M

What is a language?

A language is, to some extent, a tool that allows communication between two or more beings. But let’s take it one step further.

What is communication? Communication is the transfer of ideas from one being to another.

Now we have something. When people want to communicate some idea, they encode this idea into words and say them (or type them, like I’m doing right now). On the receiving end, a person decodes the words they hear or read into an idea.

The idea transfusion is, of course, prone to inaccuracies. First, the words heard aren’t necessarily identical to the words said. Second, the encoding of ideas into speech is inevitably imperfect. Third, the decoding of words back into the space of ideas is even more intricate. (Can you truly understand the idea behind the term epiphany if you haven’t experienced one yourself?)

As such, it’s not uncommon for officers in the US military to major in English when in college. Especially when lives are at stake, it’s great to have leaders skilled in encoding complex ideas in simple terms—in terms conducive to accurate decoding.

I’m not sure how easy it is to decode the language of this entry, but hey—I didn’t major in English.