The origin of language is one of the riddles of mankind. History begins with languages already formed, the intricate relics of vanished civilisations.
As history progresses, so languages deteriorate. Latin and Sanscrit are richer and more expressive than any of their living successors. As Adam Smith wrote in his beautiful essay of 1761, Considerations concerning the first Formation of Languages, the breakdown of the Latin inflexions left Romance languages that were wordy, unpleasing to the ear and rigid in their word order. Amaveram decayed into ego habebam amatum and then io aveva amato.
The God of Genesis created different languages to thwart the insolence of humanity. As an explanation of the origin of linguistic diversity, the Tower of Babel is as convincing as anything since. Eighteenth-century philologists looked to the new science of geology and resolved that the only way to understand the deep past was to study the present.
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