Only Europeans gesticulate when speaking; one might say that all their power of speech is in their arms. Their lungs are powerful too, but to nearly no avail. Where a Frenchman would strain and torture his body, emitting a great verbal torrent, a Turk will momentarily remove his pipe from his mouth to utter a few words softly, crushing one with a single sentence.Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Languages, which Treats of Melody and Musical Imitation, translated by John H. Moran.
... The language of the first men is represented to us as the tongues of geometers, but we see that they were the tongues of poets.
And so it had to be. One does not begin by reasoning, but by feeling. It is suggested that men invented speech to express their needs: an opinion which seems to me untenable. The natural effects of the first needs was to separate men, and not to reunite them. It must have been that way, because the species spread out and the earth was promptly populated. Otherwise mankind would have been crammed into a small area of the world, and the rest would have remained uninhabited.
From this it follows clearly that the origin of languages is not at all due to people's first needs. It would be absurd to suppose that the means of uniting them derived from the cause of their separation. Whence then this origin? From moral needs, passions. All the passions tend to bring people back together again, but the necessity of seeking a livelihood forces them apart. It is neither hunger nor thirst but love, hatred, pity, anger, which drew from them the first words. Fruit does not disappear from our hands. One can take nourishment without speaking. One stalks in silence the prey on which one would feast. But for moving a young heart, or repelling an unjust aggressor, nature dictates accents, cries, lamentations. There we have the invention of the most ancient words; and that is why the first languages were singable and passionate before they became simple and methodical.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Languages, which Treats of Melody and Musical Imitation, translated by John H. Moran.