"More than a cluster of words or a set of grammatical rules, a language is a flash of the human spirit, the filter through which the soul of each particular culture reaches into the material world. A language is as divine and mysterious as a living creature...each language is, in itself, an entire ecosystem of thought, an old growth forest of the mind. Each is a window into a world, a monument to the culture that gave birth to it, and whose spirit it expresses."
-Wade Davis, The Wonder of the Ethnosphere, The Light at the Edge of the World
