‘Quite right,’ said Professor Playfair. ‘Words have no meaning unless there is someone present who can understand them. And it can’t be a shallow level of understanding – you can’t simply tell a farmer what triacle means in French and expect that the bar will work. You need to be able to think in a language – to live and breathe it, not just recognize it as a smattering of letters on a page. This is also why invented languages* will never work, and why ancient languages like Old English have lost their effect.
