Substratum Language Quotes

“At the beginning of this book, I spoke of a song, a requiem for someone who had died, where the message was hidden in the chord structure, the substratum layer, while the tune, the first thing most people go to, to find meaning, floated in the air above it, ephemeral, forgettable, almost an afterthought. Flesh does not last, it seemed to say. But bones might. And so could the wonderful things we built when we were alive. You can still see us, if you know how to look, and imagine how we lived. But you will have to make do with an X-ray image.”
― Peggy Mohan, Father Tongue, Motherland: The Birth of Languages in South Asia