[niemandhier]

Saphire-Worff is dead; but I think language matters more than we usually assume.

My favourite example is Arabic, which is both an old and hard to extend language.

In Arabic you would have a hard time to express the concept of „a foreigner who is citizen but resides out of state“.

Not that we often speak about this concept in English, but the word used to refer to „citizens“ carries the connotation of „nation“ and the alternative word used for „inhabitants“ carries the connotation of being on site.

Speaking of a Yemeni citizen and than meeting an Asian person, would surprise people even if they new that the person they were meeting was named „Ho“.

[ted_bunny]

Can you be more specific about what makes it "hard to extend?"

[niemandhier]

It has a Root-pattern morphology in which words optimally derive from a set of 3 or 4 consonants. To some extend those roots can even be grouped into meta roots.

Loan words do not easily slide into this. New words are less easily made up than e.g. in German, where you can just concatenate.

Lots of words have been around for a long time, since quranic Arabic influences the language still, and as a result have layers of meaning.