It is important to note that all the quotes in the following article are from a book by Steven Pinker “on the language instinct” and should be credited as such and for any demerits mistakes, misrepresentations or misquotes the full responsibility is mine.
“Finally since language is the product of a well engineered biological instinct, we shall see that it is not the nutty barrel of monkeys that entertainer-columnists make it out to be.” I looked at languages and communications between human beings and it rather seemed that language emerged out of the need to give and take to and from the other. As the number of the items and the number of the individuals that needed to take and give increases and the paths the items to be given and taken increases, there arose the need to sophisticate the language in manners and ways to transverse the same distance and through the same intricate paths.
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Which is the best language to learn? Which is the easiest?
Two different questions, often uttered in the same breath. But that’s okay, because there will be only one answer. Whichever language you wholeheartedly choose to study will be both the best and the easiest. However, here’s some help choosing.
The choices.
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In modernity there are no more steady rules of connections. Connections are elliptical and changing. Syntax and grammar are relational; however, they are not whatever. Modernity is about the freedom of connections which are not reducible to pure logic or rationalism. Modernity is dreaming new languages which are beyond representation. Language is tied to dreaming freedom. Whoever destroys language destroys himself or herself.
Language is a second body. Delaunays’ paintings, their “window to the city”, the surrealist novel, the nouveau roman all explore language as a second body. It is the materialized soul. With Novalis the body becomes the stream, the night, the day, the cosmos. His “liquid girls” are the secret of language. To know that “milk is black” is also one of the many secrets of language linking us directly to the cosmos. Language is a secret naming.
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