On the origin of languages
It is tempting to think that they have clear beginnings. They don’t
IN A CHURCH hewn out of a mountainside, just over a thousand years or so ago, a monk was struggling with a passage in Latin. He did what others like him have done, writing the tricky bits in his own language between the lines of text and at the edges. What makes these marginalia more than marginal is that they are considered the first words ever written in Spanish.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “On the origin of languages”
From the April 23rd 2022 edition
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