9 billion tongues

The utility of language is a function of its indexicality. Language doesn't describe or represent; rather, it points. It constitutes next to nothing on its own. It could even be said that it is devoid of any content. There is no greater inherent meaning to be found in the most ponderous of orations than in the humblest of apostrophes. The content is always furnished - conjured, if you will - by the interpreter, in much the same fashion as it was originally furnished by the intellect of the writer or speaker.

Words, like images and in general all manner of multisensory input, inevitably come to suggest far more than they contain, and can be considered effective mainly insofar as they succeed in this capacity. The empty vessel of sign: a puff of air, the splash of ink, in time plays host to an elaborate menagerie of phenomenological fauna and flora, both real and imagined.   

Corollary: If this were not so, the meanings of words would forever be fixed, and the patterns of language rendered static and inflexible through the ages. There would be but one universal tongue.