In the 1980s Ivan Guzman de Rojas, a Bolivian computer scientist, accidentally demonstrated that Aymara might be not only very ancient but, significantly, that it might be a ‘made-up’ language – something deliberately and skilfully designed. Of particular note was the seemingly artificial character of its syntax, which was rigidly structured and unambiguous to an extent thought inconceivable in normal ‘organic’ speech.22 This synthetic and highly organized structure meant that Aymara could easily be transformed into a computer algorithm to be used to translate one language into another: ‘The
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