Languages, Etc.

Here's a jpeg of a chart showing the relationships of the world's languages. If I recall correctly, a character in Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon speaks Manx. Languages (and codes/programming) are recurring themes in Stephenson's fiction. In Snowcrash, Hiro Protagonist is confronted with a (Sumerian) meme which acts like a virus.

(I do like the idea of spoken languages being programming languages used for our wetware (brain/ nervous system).

In 1999, Stephenson wrote an online essay about proprietary operating systems, In the Beginning was the Command Line. It's a bit old now, but still worth reading. In the Beginning was updated in 2004 by Garrett Birkel (with Stephenson's permission).