There are three thousand languages spoken today. Some people even believe that there are as many as five thousand languages that are still living today. These languages are very different one from another. Indeed, they are so different as to be mutually unintelligible that we call them separate languages. A speaker of one of them, no matter how skillful and fluent, cannot communicate with a speaker of another unless one of them, as we say, “learns the other's language." Yet these differences, great as they are, are differences of detail - differences of the kinds of sounds used and the ways of putting them together. In their broad outlines, in their basic principles, and even in the way they approach certain specific problems of communication, languages have a great deal in common.
今天人们所说的语言达3000种，有人甚至认为活的语言至今还有5000种之多。这些语言之间有很大的差异。实际上，正因为这些语言互不相通，所以我们才将它们叫做独立的语言。操其中一门语言者，无论其熟练程度和流利程度有多高，都无法同操另一门语言者交谈，除非他们中间有一人如同我们所说的那样“学会了另一人所说的语言”。语言之间虽然存在着这些巨大的不同，差异却是细微具体的，例如语音的不同以及语音组合方面的差异。从语言的概貌、基本原则及对一些具体的交际问题的处理方法来看，语言有着诸多的共同点。
We are all intimately familiar with at least one language, yet few of us ever stop to consider what we know about it. The words of a language can be listed in a dictionary, but not all the sentences, and a language consists of these sentences as well as words.
Speakers use a finite set of rules to produce and understand an infinite set of sentences. These rules comprise the grammar of a language, which is learned when you acquire the language. The grammar of a language includes the sound system, how words may be combined into phrases and sentences, and the way in which sounds and meanings are related.
虽然我们每个人至少通晓一门语言，但很少有人会静心思考一下自己对所操语言的语言知识又知道多少。语言包括词汇，也包括句子，语言的词汇可以在词典中列出，但并非所有的句子都能收到词典里。
说话者可以运用一组数量有限的规则来表达和理解数量无限的句子。这些规则组成了语言的语法体系，你在习得语言的同时学到了语法。语法包括音系、组词或组织句子的规则以及语音与语义之间联系的规则。
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