Language is simply a means of
communication. One who lives utterly alone, has no use of language whatsoever,
because he has no one to communicate anything to.
Arabic and English and Mandarin are modes
of language, gestures and body language and even facial expressions are other
modes. What's important is what gets communicated. Word is a symbol that signifies
a thing or event or place or person that exists in real life and has been
commonly experienced. Words are yet clusters of symbols, called letters, that
joined together form a word. And meaning is the bridge, or the backward
reflection, of a word to its thing or event or place or person. (Very difficult
to explain with just words.)
Why do we use English words frequently, and
borrow English phrases into our Arabic expression? Why do we write in Standard
Arabic as though we translate what we say from English? (British colonialism
is the basic answer, but that such style would survive goes further.) Why do we
use stones and rocks and spices and gastronomy and rivers and greenery as
metaphors? Why do we care about specific things that Egyptians, for example,
don't care about? Because we are who we are, and our unique use of the Arabic
language reflects that.
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