kumquat is really 金橘 . Which makes perfect sense really

I personally find all names weird. I mean who sat around and decided a table was a table and not a chair. I mean seriously? Why did they not call a table a chair, a chair an elephant and an elephant a table? Who decided which definitions to give all the prefixes? Why is hypo not enough and hyper too much? Why not the opposite?

kum•quat

late 17th century: from Chinese (Cantonese dialect) kam kwat ‘little orange.’

Why don't more languages use clicks like the language of the San people of southern Africa? (Khoisan)  If a person who is tone deaf grows up with a tone language as their first language, is it like they have a speech impediment? Does language shape culture, or does culture shape language? We smirk at names like kumquat, but do people who speak Cantonese giggle at words like chair, table, and door?

They probably do, but that blog post is on a different website. 

There is a wonderful, if intense, book I read years ago that talks about the origins of written language.  Now I know you guys are talking here about the origins of *spoken* language, but close enough for me to jump at the chance to recommend this book.  It's called The Spell of the Sensuous and the author is David Abram.

This book is not easy reading.  I had to go slowly and make sure I understood each point before moving on.  There were whole sections that I was tempted to skip over because they didn't seem interesting or understandable to me, but then, every 25 pages or so, there would be some huge "aHA!" moment that tied together all the confusing things I had almost skipped over.  I remember repeatedly thinking "wow, that's profound; I could stop reading now and the whole book would be worth it just for that moment."  And then of course "I better keep reading to see if there are more of those!"  Which of course there were.

I don't want to give away any spoilers and I'm sure I wouldn't do them justice anyway, but in essence he is looking at how humans, starting with our original relationship with the world -- with nature, landscape, the passage of time, etc -- moved into the development of written language.  If this sounds boring to you, ignore me, because it's not!

I really need to read that book again soon.