Language, Pints, and the Eternal "Why?"

Now, given that yours truly has started spending a considerable amount of time writing - or at least contemplating ideas, spinning narratives, crafting dialogue, and occasionally questioning their own life choices - it was only fitting that the question of how language itself formed would pique my interest. It’s not a new obsession, mind you. Ever since childhood, I’ve found myself drawn to the idea that words don’t just describe the world - they shape it, build it, define it.

Sverker Johansson understands this well. He opens The Dawn of Language with a scene that is both painfully familiar and strangely profound: a conversation with his five-year-old son. It follows a pattern any parent, teacher, or unsuspecting adult in the vicinity of a curious child will recognise:

"Why?"
"Because X."
"But why?"
"Because Y."
"But why?"
…long pause, shoulders raised in existential surrender.

At this point, most parents wave a vague hand at “science” or “because that’s how it is,” but Johansson, being made of sterner stuff (and by ‘stern’ we mean former particle physicist at CERN turned linguist, because apparently some people need two intimidatingly complex careers), took a different route. He wrote a book. And what a book it is.