part 6

50 We can see why distances between people are not as important now as they were. They may be bridged in so many ways. What is a bridge? Here is a wide river with a bridge over it. The bridge is more than a mile long and is made of steel. It can carry very heavy weights. It is so strong that not only automobiles but trains go across it. It is so high that great ships go under it. Language is a bridge between minds, a bridge so strong that trains of thought can go across. Language can bridge distances.

51 Language can bridge time as well as space. Ideas can go from mind to mind across the language bridge, and they can come from the past to the present. We can read what people before us wrote and keep their books for others to read in the future. Here are some of the great books of all time. Books are the most important records we have of people's thoughts and feelings, their ideas and desires.

52 All people have more in common with all others on earth than most of them know. What do the words "in common" mean? What is their meaning? What do the people in this family have in common? They have their family name in common. They are the Smiths, or the Wangs. They have a house in common; it is their home. The husband and wife have their children in common. In some parts of the world a man may have a number of wives. In other parts a woman may have a number of husbands. In these countries the wives have their husband in common or the husbands have their wife in common. People of the same country have that country in common. It is their country. Every country has a flag. What is the flag of your country?

53 People who talk the same language have that language in common. It is their language, the language of each and all of them. They have the ideas and feelings about things which that language carries. People who do not talk a language do not know what those who use it are saying. They do not know what its words can mean. They have less in common with those who talk it than those people have with one another. Sometimes, as in India, in one country under one flag people talk many languages. They have their country and their flag in common, but some of them have to learn the language of others if they are to have a language in common.

54 Talking with someone is saying things to him, hearing what he says and taking in his meaning. People can talk together only when they have a language in common. When you were very young your parents talked to you and after a time you saw what they meant and learned to talk to them. A baby's first words are commonly names for its parents. Some children learn to talk earlier than others. We go on learning our language all our lives. Some people talk more than they think, and some people think more than they talk. Most of our thinking is done through language.

55 There are more than six billion people on the earth and about 2500 languages. Of these languages only about twelve are used by more than 50 million people. Here are the names of some languages which have very wide use: Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), English, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Bengali. All these languages have more people talking them today than ever before. Two hundred years ago there were only about twenty million people who talked English, for example. Now there are about five hundred million, and there may be many, many more.