Meaning and use of ideograms around "language" : 说，话，语 I just arrived in this warm community and am glad to find a stackexchange about Chinese language. I merely began to learning Chinese and find it really exciting, yet many of uses and conventions are neither so clear to me, nor really explained -- or even underlined -- in my learning books and websites.

So here is my question: I feel a bit confused concerning the different sinograms relatives to the language and the speech. Here is what I induce from tremendously few examples and a lot of mystical extrapolations:


说 (shuo1) means "to talk, to speak, to say" (i.e. talking in a general, theoretical way, referring to the idea/potentiality of speaking)
话 (hua4) means "dialect, spoken word" (i.e. talking in a practical, pragmatic way, referring to the act/practical skill of speaking)
语 (yu3) means "language" (i.e. the abstract building which is a language, endowed with its rules and theories)


Here I compared the three with two probable bias:


I assume sinograms to have a proper meaning by itself, which seems to rarely be the case
I propose the translations treating them sometimes as nouns, sometimes as verbs, even if it seems to be an irrelevant distinction in Chinese


Thus I add two more general questions about the Chinese language:


Are sinograms really used sometimes by themselves and understood like that, or do they only carry a meaning when cristalized in a "word" ? (That is to say : is my question relevant or is it more a meta-question for linguists and language anthropologists ?)
Do those three have "preferred" grammatical functions ? That 说 more often used as a verb and 语 more as a noun ? Or is my comparison of significations meaningful ?


谢谢 and sorry for the possible lack of precision :)
All Chinese character has its meaning or meanings. Some can be used as a word on its own, 

For example:

Noun: 


人(person(/ people/ human)
火(fire)   
山(hill/ mountain) 


Verb: 


殺(kill)
跑(run)
吃(eat)


Adjective: 


大(big)
小(small)
好(good) 


However, the majority of Chinese words are composed of two characters. 

For example: 


正確(correct) 
討論(discuss/ discussion)
明白(understand) 


*See reference here 

As for your question: 


說 is mostly a verb for "speak" or "talk" but it can combine with other characters to form more specific words. For example: 演說 (lecture/ public speech), 說服(convince/ persuade), 說明(explain)
話 is mostly a noun for "spoken words" but it can combine with other characters to form more specific words, for example: 謊話(lie), 說話(speak/ talk) , 對話(conversation)
語 is mostly a noun for "language" but it can combine with other characters to form more specific words, for example: 語言(language), 英語 (English), 語音(speech tone)


Many characters' original meaning had became obsolete. These characters only become meaningful when they are a part of a "two characters word" or a part of a "four characters phrase". One good example would be "黷" in "窮兵黷武" . The character: "黷" itself originally meant "act wantonly" but today, no one would use this character on its own except in the idiom 窮兵黷武.