Wittgenstein and language

As someone who's fascinated by language and languages, I've really enjoyed studying Wittgenstein this semester because of his focus on language.

When I first read in the Tractatus his comment that "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world," I thought about how learning new languages can open up new ways of thinking and new ways of expressing thins, indeed, opening up the limits of our world. I know Wittgenstein didn't really talk about difference between languages, or what it may mean to speak multiple languages; he rather focused on language in general and what it structure and use mean for our concepts.

But all his talk of language made me appreciate language even more, the fact that it's a tool we use to be able to communicate with others. I feel some people may not even think about the fact that we create the language we use as we use it, and sometimes people tell me they're just not good at languages when learning foreign languages. I'd love to be able to learn all the languages of the world, but unfortunately that just isn't possible. I think it's amazing to learn all the different ways in which you can express yourself and in which you can communicate with others. Learning another language is also a way of learning a different way of seeing the world.

Maybe it took learning another language than his native German, English, for Wittgenstein to have really developed his use theory of meaning and his notion of language games. For it's often not until you have to learn another language that you really think about language at all. And it's in learning languages that you realize meaning's not all about reference. So many expressions and words you can't understand the meaning of until you've heard how they're used and used them yourself. This is something you realize when you go into a foreign country and, with your textbook knowledge of the language, can't understand much of what people say.