Only humans have the biological capacity to communicate with a rich language based on symbols and rules, enabling us to pass on cultural ideas to future generations.

WSJ: Study Points to a Single, Original Language for All Humans

Partly because the language is already so rich, the "marginal utility" of new words is declining: Existing things are already well described.

WSJ: Culturomics Looks at the Birth and Death of Words

With its rich exploration of the language and mythology of car design, the Royal College show is hardly lightweight.

ECONOMIST: Car design

One of the merits of the book is that it makes it abundantly clear how the language of negotiators from both the rich and emerging worlds often masks hypocritical pandering to special groups.

ECONOMIST: The multilateral trade talks: Travails of trade | The

And though paleoanthropologists are coming around to the view that Neanderthals developed sophisticated ways to communicate, including some form of spoken language, they may have lacked the rich vocabulary or symbolic structure we take for granted today.

WSJ: Neanderthals: Why Us and Not Them?

Trade balances are a rich source of over-emotional language used by economic writers.

ECONOMIST: Hold your tongue

And despite years of mandatory English-language classes in secondary school, the Japanese score lowest among rich countries on English tests.

ECONOMIST: Japan as number three

It's true that an internationally adopted child loses the rich background of history and religion and culture and language that the child was born into, but the cruel fact is that most children don't have access to the local, beautiful culture within an orphanage.

CNN: Mother of five adopted kids: 'I admire Madonna'

Simple language can be elegant, and deceptively plain declarative syntax is capable of hinting at a rich emotional complexity teeming underneath.

ECONOMIST: New fiction

They serve a rich community of learners from all over the world, crossing geographic, ethnic and language boundaries.

CNN: Top college courses, for free?