Language is one of the most important yet overlooked aspects of our lives, at least by the majority of people I interact with on a daily basis. For many of us, language comes to us as easily as breathing; we follow our natural instincts to communicate vocally, usually in whatever language those around us (family, friends, teachers, etc.) have been influencing us to speak.

When you put aside the rather first-hand nature of speaking your language, you’ll find that there is much more to it than what meets the eye (or, rather, ear!)

The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Linguistics delves into a multitude of different aspects of language, and it can be divided into six major branches: phonology, phonetics, syntax, semantics, morphology, and pragmatics. All of these branches focus on a particular part of language, each of which are universal to every spoken language.

First off, phonology and phonetics. The two branches are often grouped together, considering how similar they are, though there are a lot of differences between the two. Phonology revolves around the hearing aspect of language – the sounds a language produces and which sounds may exist in one language that doesn’t in another. For example, the very guttural Ayn ( ع ) or the emphatic Daad (ض) are sounds that exist in the Arabic language, but they are not found in the English language—just how the sounds for P and V don’t exist in Arabic, but they do in English. Phonetics is almost the same, but focuses more on how people perceive and understand these sounds.

There is also something called the IPA: the International Phonetic Alphabet. The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabet based in Latin script that includes a notation for every single sound that the human mouth could possibly produce. IPA is especially important for linguists who are more focused on learning about spoken language.

Now, onto syntax. Syntax is a branch that everybody, whether they’re aware of it or not, is familiar with. Syntax has to do with how sentences are formed, and depending on the language, there are different rules for syntax. SVO, which is the abbreviation for subject-verb-object, has to do with the order in which these are said in a sentence. English is a very strictly SVO language, which means that the subject comes first, the verb comes next, and the object is last. For example: “Jude plays video games” is an example of an SVO sentence. Spanish is the same (but is generally more flexible): “Jude juega los videojuegos.” However, some languages can use every single word order—Arabic is a prime example of this.

Semantics, the fourth branch on our list, has to do with the meanings and interpretations of different words or phrases. Semantics is quite a difficult field of study to simply summarize in a short paragraph, but Brittanica offers an excellent article filled with examples of semantics. You can find it at this link: https://www.britannica.com/science/semantics.

Morphology is an incredibly important part of linguistics, and dives even deeper into the syntax of sentences. Morphology revolves around the internal structures of words themselves, and all of their root words, suffixes, affixes, and so many other types of morphologies that can be added to root words. It also focuses on breaking down complex words into their simplest parts; think of simplifying a complex algebraic equation, but instead of numbers and variables, it’s parts of language. An easy example is the word ‘talked.’ It is composed of two parts (also called morphemes): the root word talk-, and something called an inflectional suffix, -ed, which indicates it is the past tense of the word talk.

Pragmatics, the sixth and final major branch, has to do with context of sentences and words. Most students of any AP English class are unknowingly familiar with this concept—an example of pragmatics is delving into certain rhetorical strategies to find deeper meanings and true intentions while simultaneously analyzing the people that are saying the words as well as the context of the times/relationship between the people.

Linguistics, in my opinion, is one of the most underrated fields of study. It holds such a wide variety of incredibly diverse and informational studies, something that is particularly interesting to me. While it might not be the most renowned field, it is certainly one of the most crucial to understanding the fundamentals of the human language and how we communicate with one another.