It is quite possible to spend years studying or even teaching various languages without ever having a very firm or useful notion of what a language is. But to proceed in this way makes learning a language much more difficult than expected. This is probably the main reason why so many people say, "I don't really speak French. I just studied it in school!" This lack of confidence is bad enough when applied to a foreign language. When extended to the nativelanguage, however it can cause serious worry and outright suffering. Our confusion about the nature of languages is really disturbing. It's so bad that many people who speak excellent English never have the satisfaction of knowing they do, but go through life with feelings of guilt about their supposed poor skill