--- title: What language is: sounds, words and rules everyone shares — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «What language is: sounds, words and rules everyone shares», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Language is a code that a whole group of people shares: sounds (or hand signs, or letters) that stand for meani --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / What language is: sounds, words and ru… # What language is: sounds, words and rules everyone shares Lesson 1 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/0/) — Language is a code that a whole group of people shares: sounds (or hand signs, or letters) that stand for meanings, plus rules for putting them together. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/1/) — Picture a toddler pointing at the fridge and shouting "Juice!"; one word, a pointing finger and a hopeful face are enough, because everyone can see what is going on around the word. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/2/) — Most words have no natural link to what they mean: English says "cat", Ukrainian says "кіт", and neither is the cat's true name; each group of speakers simply agreed long ago. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/3/) — Every language has grammar, the rules for fitting words together; "The dog ate the bone" makes sense, "Dog the bone the ate" makes people laugh, and the speakers follow these rules without even thinking. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/4/) — Everybody has several ways of talking (chatty with mates, careful with the head teacher), and every place has its own local words, from "dreich" in Glasgow to "y'all" in Texas; all of it is real language. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/5/) — A language is a system of words and rules that people share to pass on meaning. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/6/) — Context is what is going on around the words; it helps you understand short messages like "Juice!". - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/7/) — Most words are arbitrary: the link between a word and its meaning is a habit of the speakers, not something in nature. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/8/) — Grammar is the set of rules for how words fit together; everyone who speaks a language already uses its grammar. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/9/) — In English, word order shows who does what: in "The dog bit the man" the dog does the biting, and in "The man bit the dog" the man does. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/10/) — The subject is who or what does the action; the object is who or what the action is done to; Ukrainian shows this mostly with word endings instead of word order. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/11/) — Slang is a real part of language with shared meanings: "bruv" is London slang for mate or brother, "fr" means for real, and "no cap" means no lie. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/12/) — Experts estimate there are about 7,000 languages in the world; the number is not exact, because it is hard to say where one language ends and another begins. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/13/) — Many people in the world grow up bilingual (speaking two languages) or multilingual (speaking several). - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/14/) — Babies babble ("ba-ba-ba") long before their first words; it is practice with the sounds of language, and every human group ever found has language. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/15/) — A register is the style of talk you choose for a situation, like chatty with friends or careful with a teacher; switching registers is a skill, not being fake. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/16/) — Speech came long before writing, and in English letters and sounds often do not match: "knee" has four letters but only two sounds, n and ee. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/17/) — Local words belong to real dialects: in Scotland "dreich" means dull, grey and drizzly and "the day" means today; in the southern US "y'all" means you all and "fixin' to" means about to. - next →: [Nouns: the names of things, people, places and ideas](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)