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Originally Posted by Charlatan
The whole point of being understood is that we have shared meanings to words. If some of us used the word "gratch" to signify the yellow peeled fruit while another group used the word "banana" to signify the same object, there would be a lot of confusion. As speakers of the English language we have agreed, historically, that the word "banana" is the word we use to signify the yellow peeled fruit. If we just used any old word meaning would be lost.
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Well, that's not entirely true. Look at ebonics, or more specifically modern urban speech. It constantly changes, quickly, and often is hard to follow. But when you speak it everyday, things make sense. Fo' shizzle my brizzle! shizzle doesn't sound like sure except for having the same first few letters. But in context it makes sense. If you are at the grocery store and say "I need to get a bunch of banizzles yo!" someone who is familiar with those language constructs may assume you mean banana without you needing to explain it, or without them needing to have ever heard the word banizzle before. My wife and I play at this often, trying to talk in non-sensible language to each other. Most of the time, we still understand, if even ONLY by context. it shows that a commonality does not need to be present if context is basically understood. Theoretically, the same could be said regarding dialects of language. Mandarin and Cantonese show this as well as dialects here in the US. If someone says they're thirsty and needs to find a bubbler... one might (as I did the first time I heard exactly this) assume bubbler means water fountain (or drinking fountain) without ever having heard the word before. Soda vs. pop vs. Coke (calling all pop/soda "coke" did confuse me the first time though, I must admit).
Maybe it'd be interesting to see HOW different language can be before context no longer pulls it back together for someone else.