You are in a fog of mind, and I ask "tell me what you think," out comes from your mouth a string of words that make sense to both you and me... Ah, the twin magic of language: it organizes our thought, and communicates it to others.
To what extent does language aid us in expressing our innate thinking, or it actually forms and develops our thought, is still debatable in the academic circle, but no one denies the ability to use language to communicate and coordinate group actions is one key evolutionary advantage that helps human species reign supreme in the natural world.
Compared to the ephemeral exchanges among a number of people limited by how far the sound waves can travel and remain audible that is spoken language, written language has the advantage of presenting our thought and idea in clear, structured form in plain view that allows easy review and revision, and more importantly, when kept on formidable material, transition and distribution of what's recorded on it.
Without a centralized writing system, there would not have been a Chinese civilization over its diverse ethnic and geographical compositions through thousands of years, just as the Western civilization would not be what it is today had it not carried the Greek-Latin languages through the medieval times. The written language is so powerful it could even revive its spoken counterpart: see how the ancient Hebrew language was brought back from the dead to become the day-to-day, verbal and literal lingua franca of Israel today!
While on the subject of audio (spoken language) vs visual (written language): The alphabetical language, due to its phonetic nature, molds the sequential, logical thinking of the Western mind, while a hieroglyphic language such as Chinese that has both audio and visual components built-in in its semantical characters (形聲字=形思惟+音思惟) induces the more holistic (logical + emotional) thinking of the Eastern mind, or so say some oriental cultural nativists.
In my own theory of language, human consciousness is like one big, fluid dark hole that, once a bit part of it gets perturbed by a thing or emotion, consents to use a word or expression for that thing or emotion that it thinks triggers the same perturbation experienced by other conscious beings.
And that assumption always has some margin of error, thus a word or expression will mean differently between people of different cognitive dispositions or cultural upbringing, sometimes subtly, sometimes disastrously.
The dark hole is so huge that our existing language can only cover a tiny bit of our conscious cosmos, that's why we are constantly creating new words, twisting old words with new meanings, using metaphors and analogies to explain things, etc.
There is a form of literature, poem, that uses minimalistic words and obscure expressions on purpose, so as to leave room for readers to "fill in the blank" from the grab bag of their seemingly bottomless conscious mind.
All can speak, but not all can write,
What things can you tell me that words cannot describe?
Be bothered not by a stirred mind,
All shall subside into a good night!
Compared to the ephemeral exchanges among a number of people limited by how far the sound waves can travel and remain audible that is spoken language, written language has the advantage of presenting our thought and idea in clear, structured form in plain view that allows easy review and revision, and more importantly, when kept on formidable material, transition and distribution of what's recorded on it.
Without a centralized writing system, there would not have been a Chinese civilization over its diverse ethnic and geographical compositions through thousands of years, just as the Western civilization would not be what it is today had it not carried the Greek-Latin languages through the medieval times. The written language is so powerful it could even revive its spoken counterpart: see how the ancient Hebrew language was brought back from the dead to become the day-to-day, verbal and literal lingua franca of Israel today!
While on the subject of audio (spoken language) vs visual (written language): The alphabetical language, due to its phonetic nature, molds the sequential, logical thinking of the Western mind, while a hieroglyphic language such as Chinese that has both audio and visual components built-in in its semantical characters (形聲字=形思惟+音思惟) induces the more holistic (logical + emotional) thinking of the Eastern mind, or so say some oriental cultural nativists.
In my own theory of language, human consciousness is like one big, fluid dark hole that, once a bit part of it gets perturbed by a thing or emotion, consents to use a word or expression for that thing or emotion that it thinks triggers the same perturbation experienced by other conscious beings.
And that assumption always has some margin of error, thus a word or expression will mean differently between people of different cognitive dispositions or cultural upbringing, sometimes subtly, sometimes disastrously.
The dark hole is so huge that our existing language can only cover a tiny bit of our conscious cosmos, that's why we are constantly creating new words, twisting old words with new meanings, using metaphors and analogies to explain things, etc.
There is a form of literature, poem, that uses minimalistic words and obscure expressions on purpose, so as to leave room for readers to "fill in the blank" from the grab bag of their seemingly bottomless conscious mind.
All can speak, but not all can write,
What things can you tell me that words cannot describe?
Be bothered not by a stirred mind,
All shall subside into a good night!
