All languages had their birth, their apogee and decline.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process that leaves them teeming with irregularities, quirks, and words like 'knight.'
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.
History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.
English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background.
Some languages expand not only your ability to speak to different people but what you're able to think.
Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.
Invented languages have often been created in tandem with entire invented universes, and most conlangers come to their craft by way of fantasy and science fiction.
Language is an archaeological vehicle... the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.
When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.
A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.