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Language is one of the few aspects of the human experience that every person on the planet shares in common. Although the letters, sounds and sentences of one language compared to another look and sound different, every human-being acquires and uses oral speech to transfer a thought from his or her brain to another human being. If we think about language as a very basic idea like this, we see that it is no more than a mere series of sounds and phrases that are generally accepted by a specific group of people, most times within a certain geographic area.

Although a child in Bolivia absorbs a different pattern of sounds and letters than a child in the United States, both children share the experience of acquiring a native form of oral communication. We often get so caught up identifying one language is different from our own that we forget to compare the similar traits that they share. Acquiring a primary language is not a "rite-of-passage" or academic experience, it is a journey that spans one's entire life.

Have you ever thought of language this way? Imagine that you were born in Columbia or Russia. How would your experience learning Spanish or Russian as your native language be different? Would it be the same? Do languages act as borders that separate countries or a common thread that joins them? What other aspects of life are determined by one's language?