On the Origin of Languages论语言的起源

It’s tempting to think that they have clear beginnings. They don’t.

人们往往认为语言有明确的诞生时间，实则不然。

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 had done， writing the tricky bits in his own language1 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.

大约一千多年前，在一座从半山腰雕凿出来的修道院中，有位修士正在冥思苦读一篇拉丁语文章。（剩余5918字）