Frank Mayhar point out > . . . a gene that affects fine voluntary muscular control of > the mouth and larynx. It is a difference in this gene that lets humans > have language and chimpanzees (and the rest) _not_ have language. My understanding of the situation is that the fine voluntary control permits humans to produce a rich palate of sounds. However, this is not in any way *required* for language. The thriving deaf communities using sign language are a perfect counter-example. One outgrowth of the rich palate is incredible redundancy in the sounds (phonemes) that we use. Most phonemes carry multiple characterists that don't overlap significantly with other phonemes. Thus if any significant parts of the phoneme come thru, we recognise the word in spite of background noise, physical disability, etc. My very limited exposure to AMSLAN doesn't show as much redundancy. The inborn palate has regular failures. I had extreme speed problems as a child (inability to produce 'r' or 's'; it took years of speech therapy to get around it. One lingering effect is an inability to trill an 'r' such as in Spanish, Russian and others (so guess what two languages I took in school). That's not an uncommon problem for some, but it's much rarer in Spanish or Portuguese countries. Genetics? Environment? The jury is still out. But due to phoneme redundancy, Spaniards and Russians recognize my stumbled r for what it is. Other folks talk about language being hard-wired, etc. Language per se doesn't seem to be hard-wired, but grammar does. By grammar I mean breaking things down into subject, verb, object, clauses, modifiers, etc, etc. Even the oddest of languages (Basque, Navaho) have common characteristics. Our brains seem to be hard-wired for grammar. Within the patterns set down for grammar (subject-verb-object, verb-subject-object, etc, etc) we wind up with lots of different languages. Gene Wolfe did some very interesting things with this in the 'Return To The Whorl', the last book of the Short Sun series. Several groups there speak using English words but in orders and arrangements that are very rare but valid. Think of Yoda on LSD. In a surprisingly short time the reader becomes accustomed to the new structure and is able to not just follow the dialog but can actually speak a bit of it. But it always comes back to a core human grammer. A language seems to be formed by using one of the valid grammar forms, then hanging a bunch of phonemes (words) onto mutually agreed meanings. There's the famous Mark Twain quote about the difference between a word and the right word being like the diffence between lightning and a lightning bug. He's right, but the inevitible evolution of language (or erosion of language, if you prefer) means that even the most important distinctions become lost or changed over time. Which brings me back to Paarfi, or more correctly, to Dumas and translations. American English doesn't easily express the `tone of voice' that Paarfi writes in. After reading the Dumas translation that Steve got Tor to do and comparing it to other translations of Dumas, two things become clear. First, there's a certain tone in Dumas that doesn't pass easily to modern American readers. But (and second), once you *do* tune into that tone it becomes natural and a helluva lot of fun. It would not surprise me that most of the other translations of Dumas (almost all of which are quite old) were done by speakers of British English. Despite the protestations of folks on this side of the pond, they're not the same language. But it's not the obvious things that catch you (hood/bonnet, wellie/galosh, wireless/radio, etc). It's the more subtle stuff, particularly the better usage of irony and tone. What drips with irony for the British comes across as weak sarcasm here. Subtle irony is likely to be misunderstood - or worse, not even noticed. I suspect that whatever the American ear lacks with respect to irony is closely related to the tone of Dumas. Gads, that's enough for now. I'm supposed to be cleaning house... stagnation and confusion. -- It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities, without hour help. -- Chuck Pyle 'The Zen Cowboy' http://www.chuckpyle.com/bio.html