Philosophy of language is the study of how languages were created and are used. It is part of Linguistics. In continental philosophy, it is not treated as a subject by itself, but Ludwig Wittgenstein and other analytic philosophers placed particular stress on it.

Like all philosophies, there are some central questions that are important in philosophy of language:

• What does it mean for a word to mean something ? Why do some words have the same meaning ? How can we ever know if a word means something or not ? Why are some orderings of words meaningful, while others are not ?
• How are languages learnt ? How do they change ?
• How important are languages in communication ?
• How do we translate from one language into another ?
• What does truth have to do with language ?