No important national language, at least in the Occidental world, has complete regularity of grammatical structure, nor is there a single logical category which is adequately and consistently handled in terms of linguistic symbolism.
From Edward Sapir
We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection.
National languages are all huge systems of vested interests which sullenly resist critical inquiry.
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.
More and more, unsolicited gifts from without are likely to be received with unconscious resentment.
A standard international language should not only be simple, regular, and logical, but also rich and creative.
As a matter of fact, a national language which spreads beyond its own confines very quickly loses much of its original richness of content and is in no better case than a constructed language.
Cultural anthropology is more and more rapidly getting to realize itself as a strictly historical science.
It would, of course, be hopeless to attempt to crowd into an international language all those local overtones of meaning which are so dear to the heart of the nationalist.
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