The differences between language, language and speech are very important when we enter the study of language and linguistics. We are going to try to give some basic definitions that allow us to discern some concepts from others.
We can understand language as the ability to establish communication through signs, whether oral or written. In this way, language presents many different manifestations in the various communities that exist on our planet. These manifestations are what we know as languages or languages, such as Spanish, English, French or German. It would not be correct to speak, therefore, of "Spanish language" or "French language". It is important to know how to use the terms with the precision they deserve.
On the other hand, the language is, as we have said, a system of signs that speakers learn and retain in their memory. It is a code, a code that each speaker knows, and that he uses whenever he needs it (which is usually very often). This code is very important for the normal development of communication between people, since the fact that all speakers of a language know it is what makes them able to communicate with each other.
And so what is the talk? It is the embodiment of the above, the recreation of that model that the entire linguistic community knows. It's an actsingular, by which a person, individually and voluntarily, encrypts a specific message, choosing for it the code, the signs and the rules that he needs. In other words, it is the act by which the speaker, either through phonation (emission of sounds) or writing, uses the language to establish an act of communication.
Between language and speech, a kind of intermediate layer is established that linguists understand as norm. The norm is what prevents us from using some linguistic forms that, following the logic of the language, could be correct. It happens when a child says I walked, instead of I walked, in the same way that he would say I played, I watched or I sang. This type of regulation has a historical origin and, thus considered, does not constitute any irregularity. The norm imposes deviations in certain aspects of the language that we all accept, but the speaker does not have to know them at first and that is why it is so common that, among those who are learning, these types of errors arise.
