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| A field of sunflowers near St. Chambord believed to be where the French language was discovered just sitting there in 1683 |
"One minute it wasn't there, and the next it was," Hanf Dandlepuff, Director of Linguistics at the Greater Des Moines Church of the Bible, explained. "And I bet people were surprised. Really surprised!"
Just how and when the several different known languages developed is a controversial area of research, with a perfectly balanced line of division between proponents of spontaneous appearance and believers in a more gradual process involving small changes to ancient proto-languages over time. Jim Balhoff, a biolinguistical engineer who owns his own computer and responded to my email, doesn't accept claims that languages simply came into existence fully formed in their current state. "Languages aren't like animal species, which we know sometimes do just fall from the sky and instantly establish a role in an ecosystem. Languages are far more complex than a caterpillar, or a different kind of caterpillar...a fuzzy one or maybe one with those spikes all over them. I can't ignore that kind of evidence."
