Language

Language is symbolic meaning that there is only an arbitrary connection between words and the ideas or things to which they refer. In communication, language is the key element that makes it all work. Without a common language, people would not be able to communicate as well as they do with one. I know that people can communicate without a common language it is just not as efficient. I had a kid in my art class back in high school that was from China. His English was pretty hit and miss. I had quite a few friends in this art class but of course the first day we got a seating arrangement and I got sat next to the Chinese kid. At first I wasn't very happy with this. But sitting next to him a whole semester, I became pretty good friends with him. His name is Jian Lu. Being that his English was not very good, it was kind of difficult to communicate with him. But the more time I spent around him the more ways we found to communicate with each other.
When communicating with Jian, I tried using relative language. I would ask him questions about his family and things that he did over in China. I did also ask him about school over there and sizes of his classes. But being that it was normal for his classes to have 60 kids he didn't think of them to be large. His comparisons are different then mine.