Buddhaghossa also says it well. He says that if you put a bunch of
children into isolation they would grow up using a form of Pali.
At one point, without thinking of it in the way you describe here I
was of the belief that what we have in the Pali is the DNA of
language (including Chinese).
What I now believe is that the root meanings that were at one time as
visible to the ear (I'm going to leave that) in words as our
sentences are to our ears now was lost even at the time of the
Buddha, and that 'hearing' the deeper meaning possible to hear when
words are heard this way was as hidden from the common ear then as it
is now.