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I don't think language could have evolved if it was the only distinctive trait. It goes hand in hand with our ability to develop tools and technologies, and also with the fact that we cooperate with nonrelatives.

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

Language is a living thing. We can feel it changing. Parts of it become old: they drop off and are forgotten. New pieces bud out, spread into leaves, and become big branches, proliferating.

Language is a more recent technology. Your body language, your eyes, your energy will come through to your audience before you even start speaking.

I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.

I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.

Once you have speech, you don't have to wait for natural selection! If you want more strength, you build a stealth bomber; if you don't like bacteria, you invent penicillin; if you want to communicate faster, you invent the Internet. Once speech evolved, all of human life changed.

Some languages expand not only your ability to speak to different people but what you're able to think.

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.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.