Colloquia
Join David Sigrist the Linguist and the minds behind the Immersio platform as we have meaningful, yet informal conversations about the intersection of language, education, and technology. Listen in on discussions with innovators, educations, and thought leaders who are shaping how we learn and teach languages in an increasingly connected world. Whether you’re a language school owner, local instructor, or simply passionate about learning, Colloquia offers accessible explanations, inspiring stories, and actionable ideas to help us all create a world where any language can be learned and spoken by anyone.
Colloquia
What's the purpose of language?
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Welcome to the very first episode of Colloquia!
In this opening conversation, David Sigrist the Linguist from Immersio, explores one of the most fundamental questions: What’s the purpose of language? Language is so deeply woven into our daily lives that we rarely stop to notice its power—until we’re asked to imagine life without it.
Through a thought experiment, David invites listeners to reflect on how language shapes everything we do, from morning routines to complex conversations and even the simple act of following a recipe. He breaks down the “magic” of language—how it transforms ideas, experiences, and feelings into structured sounds, symbols, and words that others can perceive and understand. But what happens when someone doesn’t know the system? What once held meaning becomes nothing more than squiggles, dots, or noise.
In this episode, we set the stage for Colloquia, a podcast dedicated to exploring the fascinating ways that language works, connects us, and gives meaning to our world.
Join us as we embark on conversations about language, its role in society, and how we can use it to share ideas and create understanding across cultures.
Hello world. This is Sigrist, the Linguist from Immersio, and welcome to Colloquia, episode 1. What's the purpose of language? I just want to reflect on this question. What's the purpose of language? What do we use language for? What do we use language for? Think about it. Language is everywhere around us. As a society, we completely rely on language to function, and this is why we can so easily take it for granted and maybe don't notice it as a thing. To show you this, let's do a quick thought experiment. Think about your daily routine. Go through all the things you are going to do tomorrow, or maybe all the things you've done today so far Getting up in the morning, maybe seeing notifications on your phone or to news on the radio, if you're old school, reading a news article or post from connections on social media.
Speaker 1:Maybe saying good morning to family members, or having a conversation or a meeting at work. Conversation or a meeting at work. Responding to messages with a text, Making a phone call or a video chat where you speak. Maybe you take transit or drive and you see road signs and billboards. You chat with friends and colleagues over tea, coffee or beer. Maybe you express undying love to your partner or play games with your children or listen to a podcast about language. Clearly, I could go on for a long time like this. Imagine doing any of these things without language your work, your play, even your relaxing In nearly all of the meaningful parts of our lives.
Speaker 1:Language gives us this magical-like power to take very complex, socially constructed ideas and these physical and psychologically formed experiences and then package them, so to speak, into these words and phrases that we can then transmit to other beings who can hear them or read them and make meaning from it. Who can hear them or read them and make meaning from it? I mean, think about a piece of paper with recipes for a meal. There's all these lines of carefully constructed squiggles and dots we call letters. These are formed into lines like sentences and paragraphs and pages. Out there in the world, Another being can perceive these things with their eyes, form concepts and ideas in their mind of what it means, and then prepare food in a certain way, certain way. But another person who doesn't know your writing system or your language can still see the same thing. But they might just see it for what it is, in a sense, just a bunch of squiggles and dots, If you've ever seen the text of a different language in a different kind of script. You know this experience Again.
Speaker 1:Think about being in a store and telling someone where the restroom is. Your lungs are pumping air through your throat and mouth to make these carefully constructed noises out there in the world we call speech, and another being can perceive this noise with their ears and their brain, can make ideas and form concepts in their minds about what it means, and then they can follow your directions and get where they need to go. If they know the system, that is the language that you're speaking. Otherwise, it's just noise to them. In this podcast called Colloquia, which is a Latin word that basically means conversations, we're going to have conversations to explore how this universal human phenomenon of language works, how language has meaning that we can transmit and use, and how we can use different languages to share different kinds of meanings with other people in the world. We invite you to join us in these conversations here at Colloquia, at wherever you get your podcasts from and on our Immersio channels, which will be in the links. Thanks for listening.