This marvellous invention
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And if that sounds like some one-off freak, then consider Sumerian, the language spoken on the banks of the Euphrates some 5,000 years ago by the people who invented writing and thus enabled the documentation of history.
如此結合音義的語言並非特例，大約5000年前居住在幼發拉底河兩岸的蘇美爾人，用類似方法創造了蘇美爾語，由此開啟了人類有文字記錄的歷史。
A Sumerian word like munintuma'a ('when he had made it suitable for her') might seem rather trim compared to the Turkish colossus above.
拿蘇美爾語裡的munintuma'a（沒有性別差異）舉例，它比上文所提的土耳其語中愣長的字短了不少。
What is so impressive about it, however, is not its lengthiness but rather the reverse -the thrifty compactness of its construction.
但讓人驚歎的不是其簡短，而是倒裝——簡化到極致的以字構詞。
The word is made up of different slots, each corresponding to a particular portion of meaning.
根據不同語境意思的不同，把一個字劈成好幾段。
This sleek design allows single sounds to convey useful information, and in fact even the absence of a sound has been enlisted to express something specific.
這樣適時多變的設計不但可以用單個音表達語義，而且就連不發生的停頓都可以有實際語義。
If you were to ask which bit in the Sumerian word corresponds to the pronoun 'it' in the English translation 'when he had made it suitable for her: then the answer would have to be nothing.
例如，英語“在他為她弄好”這句話裡，翻譯成蘇美爾語，就是用停頓表“它”。
Mind you, a very particular kind of nothing： the nothing that stands in the empty slot in the middle.
值得注意的是一個特殊的停頓：即中間沒有語義的停頓。
The technology is so fine-tuned then that even a non-sound, when carefully placed in a particular position, has been invested with a specific function.
不同位置的停頓，都可以表達不同意義，這種精湛設計簡直出神入微，曲盡其妙。
Who could possibly have come up with such a nifty contraption?
何方神聖能如此慧心巧思做出如此巧妙絕倫的設計？
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