Elizabeth Bates and the Search for the Roots of Human Language
“Early linguists, as well as the Kabbalists, believed in a fictional language called the tongue of Eden, the language of Adam. It enabled all men to understand each other, to communicate without misunderstanding. It was the language of the Logos, the moment when God created the world by speaking a word. In the tongue of Eden, naming a thing was the
... See moreNeal Stephenson • Snow Crash: A Novel
This is also why some languages tend to become predominant over others: whenever a network of people is well connected, they need a single protocol to communicate. That’s called a language. The more people interact, the more they need a single language to do so, and the more a main language prevails. This is why English will become the lingua franc... See more
Uncharted Territories • Platforms and Aggregators
Men tend to follow a generation later: in other words, women tend to learn language from their peers; men learn it from their mothers.
Gretchen McCulloch • Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language
A new idea can be spread quickly if someone can explain it and communicate it to others before they have to discover it themselves. But the chief advantage of language is not communication but autogeneration. Language is a trick that allows the mind to question itself; a magic mirror that reveals to the mind what the mind thinks; a handle that turn... See more