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of written languages is much lower, with one estimate indicating not more than
500 in all. It is estimated that there are at least 16 languages spoken by more
than 50 million people. These include Chinese, English, Russian, Spanish,
Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, German, Japanese, Arabic, Urdu, French, Malay,
Italian, Telugu, and Tamil. About 1,250 languages are spoken on the African
continent alone. Some of these such as Swahili, Wolof, and Hausa cover large
areas and even nations. In Europe, there are 28 official languages. The people
of South Asia use 23 principal languages. Most countries have a large number
of internal languages, In the US, the number of such languages are 89. India
recognizes 15 for official and educational use alone, with a total number
of languages and dialects exceeding 1,650. In Ghana, the total number of
languages is 56 and Mexican Indians have more than 200. This multiplicity
of languages, each the incarnation of long traditions, is an expression of
the world’s cultural richness and diversity. Language problems inevitably
occur, but the development of a truly national communication system
covering the entire population cannot be achieved unless more languages
are used for information and cultural activities, and the ideology that any
language policy should be an intrinsic part of communication policies is
recognized.
Language is necessarily ambiguous. It means that in order to communi-
cate, we must always arrive at immediate conclusions about what other
people mean. Meaning is the process of assigning a particular significance
to a particular stimulus. The individual receiving the stimulus assigns mean-
ing or significance on the basis of his ability to understand and experience.
Language works in a comparable way. When someone says something, we
must be able to recognize what he or she means. We draw inferences based on
two main sources—the language they have used, and our knowledge about
the world. Such knowledge includes expectations about what people would
normally say in such circumstances. Understanding both the meaning of
the sentence as well as the speaker’s added meaning requires two kinds of
knowledge. Sentence meaning depends on knowledge of grammar, speaker’s
meaning depends on knowledge of context. Often, some of the components
of communication are manifested in a very explicit from, while other
components remain tacit, that is unexplained; for example, the structure of
a business organization is always presented in an organization chart. This is
an explicit manifestation. At the same time the unofficial power structure
or authority structure by which decisions are directly taken is normally not
explicitly given—it remains tacit (Ron Scollon and Suzanne Wong Scollon
1955).
The study of the relationship between language and meaning is called
semantics. Since the assignment of meaning is a psychological process or
mental activity, semantics is the study of the relationship between language
and thought as well.

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