F
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.
如此结合音义的语言并非特例，大约5000年前居住在幼发拉底河两岸的苏美尔人，用类似方法创造了苏美尔语，由此开启了人类有文字记录的历史。
A Sumerian word like munintuma'a ('when he had made it suitable for her') might seem rather trim compared to the Turkish colossus above.
拿苏美尔语里的munintuma'a（没有性别差异）举例，它比上文所提的土耳其语中愣长的字短了不少。
What is so impressive about it, however, is not its lengthiness but rather the reverse -the thrifty compactness of its construction.
但让人惊叹的不是其简短，而是倒装——简化到极致的以字构词。
The word is made up of different slots, each corresponding to a particular portion of meaning.
根据不同语境意思的不同，把一个字劈成好几段。
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.
这样适时多变的设计不但可以用单个音表达语义，而且就连不发生的停顿都可以有实际语义。
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，英语“在他为她弄好”这句话里，翻译成苏美尔语，就是用停顿表“它”。
Mind you, a very particular kind of nothing： the nothing that stands in the empty slot in the middle.
值得注意的是一个特殊的停顿：即中间没有语义的停顿。
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.
不同位置的停顿，都可以表达不同意义，这种精湛设计简直出神入微，曲尽其妙。
Who could possibly have come up with such a nifty contraption?
何方神圣能如此慧心巧思做出如此巧妙绝伦的设计？
