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"I do not know why it is said in the Genesis that Babel signifies confusion, for Ba signifies father in the Oriental tongues, and Bel signifies God; Babel signifies the city of God, the holy city. The Ancients gave this name to all their capitals. But it is incontestable that Babel means confusion, either because the architects were confounded after having raised their work up to eighty-one thousand Jewish feet, or because the tongues were then confounded; and it is obviously from that time on that the Germans no longer understand Chinese; for it is clear, according to the scholar Bochart, that Chinese is originally the same tongue as High German."

from the Dictionnaire Philosophique quoted in Des Tours de Babel by Jacques Derrida

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