[evv]

Call me crazy, but the synthetic vs. natural distinction is still blurry to me. All language is the natural evolution of thought.

> But for most "natural" languages, what makes them natural is the organic growth and evolution that occurs over time.

On this, we agree. This is the exact phenomena that I observe of computer languages.

As a small example, take the "if" statement as used in JavaScript. It wasn't invented by that language, it was borrowed from other languages like Java. But the word "if" came from English. Of course, English speakers didn't invent the concept either. As you describe, English evolved from other languages.

Computer languages are more modern, so we know more of their history. We know who drafted the first iteration of JavaScript, and we've closely tracked its evolution since then. We don't know who came up with the concept of "if", but I doubt that it was given to us humans by some divine god of language.. I think one of our ancestors invented it.