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goes on growing. Its words become more and more rounded, just like stones slipping into the river start becoming round. The continuous flow of the river, the continuous hitting against other rocks, against other stones, gives them a roundness. This can be seen; and you can immediately describe, define which languages are dead and which languages are living.
The living languages will never be perfect -- dead languages will be always perfect -- because living languages are used by imperfect, fallible, human beings, and from mouth to mouth they go on changing. They become more and more usable.
For example, in India English was introduced from the outside. A few words were bound to go into people's use -- for example, the word station. Now there has never been anything like a station in India before; it came after the English language had already come. Then the railways were introduced and of course the word station was there.
But if you move all over India in the villages, you will never find a single Indian -- I mean of the ninety-eight percent of Indians who don't know English using the word station. It is too difficult, too sophisticated. Through use, they have made -- without anybody actually making it, just by use -- they have come to the word tesan. That is simple. "Station" seems to be a little difficult, it is a strain, so "tesan."
"Report"... now, it came with the English language, the police stations and your having to "report." But go to the villages and you will be surprised: nobody uses the word report, they use the word rapat. It has become rounded, "rapat" -- the sophistication of "report," the difficulty of "report" is gone. "Rapat" that seems to be human. And so many words... and they tell a tremendously meaningful story: when words are used by people then they start taking a shape of their own. By mere usage they go on changing.
Sanskrit remains static. Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin -- they all remain static, far above people's heads, far above their hands. Sanskrit was never the language of the people and this was mystifying -- the whole country depended on the priesthood, and in Sanskrit they would be saying pure
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