something interesting.

This kind of suspicious character over here is listening in. Now, he can make out what

she's saying, and he gets it. And when she notices the lurker and turns around to chastise

him, he knows exactly what she's saying. Freeze. This is an example of language in action.

But what makes this language?

Both of them are able to speak to and understand each other using their mouths, ears and brains.

That ability gets called "language", and it's at the heart of a ton of things worth learning

about humans, about communication, about science, philosophy, logic and more.

They're using that general ability called language. But they're also using a specific

language. They're speaking and hearing English. But we don't think that this language over

here - English - is the same thing as this ability to speak and understand over here.

After all, they could be speaking French or Swahili or all different languages and still

be using language. So, what is it that sets "language" apart from all these "languages"?

The characteristics of our human language ability are the subject of intense debates.

Think about it: is our ability to speak something we learned or something we inherited? Does

it fit snuggly in a wider context alongside body signals, emotions, other social behaviors

and even animal communication, or does human language sit

way up here, all distinct and elevated? And how does language relate to thinking,

like the kind of everyday thinking when we do when we have a specific thought, like,

"those flowers are really, really red", and also the abstract thinking we do in logic

and mathematics? Which, by the way, drags us into formal languages. Logic and math allow

us humans to think about things more abstractly and universally. Instead of just "those roses"

I can think about all roses, or all x's, or even just the variable x!

Whew, so it looks like language is a tricky concept. But what about languages? Surely

they're clearer, at least.