atw: Greek, etc
- From: James Hunt <jameshunt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 21:47:45 +1000
On 07 May 2007, at 1:02 PM, Christine Kent wrote:
Basic rule is speak English not Latin (or Greek, or Latin via
French). English words tend to be simple single syllable words
that everyone understands; Latin and Greek have many syllables and
are designed to differentiate between the working classes (the
Celts etc) and the upper classes (the invading Romans, Normans etc. )
There are many polysyllabic words of Latin and Greek origin in
English. They are often technically precise and appropriate in
context. However, the idea that all Greek-derived words are
polysyllabic monstrosities designed to obfuscate or serve some
political purpose is simply not true, and dropping Greek-derived
words from English texts, or limiting their use, is not a practical
idea. I give you a list of short, common, Greek words in English -
from allergy to horoscope (which starts with a rough-breathing omega):
allergy, amoral, anaesthetic, apathy, arctic, arithmetic, asthma,
abyss, agate, archangel, angle, anchorage, aerobics, athlete,
academy, acme [features in RoadRunner cartoons, along with Ajax, the
Greek hero], acoustic, guitar [through Spanish], alphabet, amygdala
[heard on a science program on television - Greek there too -
recently], anorexia [but obesity is Latin], .....
...organ, police, programmer, sarcasm, philosophy, telephone, system,
chaos, chiropractor, psychology, idea, cinema, drama, climax, coma,
dyspepsia, zone, catastrophe, nectar, hydrogen, electric,.....
...phenomena, pedophile [in newspapers a lot, a few years ago],
rhododendron, rheumatism, Mesopotamia [had a revival in the political
press recently], centre, calypso, idiot [very, very common in popular
discourse!], theory, paradox, geography, autopsy [amazingly frequent
on television], asylum...
The modern working classes use a lot of these words. If you refer to
an acoustic guitar, or an electric guitar, or asylum seekers, or
complain that someone doesn't know their alphabet, or go to water the
rhododendrons, or mention your mobile phone, you are using Greek.
It's everywhere.
The words may well have originated in a literate class and filtered
down the social scale in some past era, but it would be hard for us
to do without these words today. I once came across a claim by a
Greek philologist that there are at least 40,000 Greek loan words in
English. I have no way of checking this, but considering the amount
of Greek we use in everyday speech and writing, I would not be
surprised if the claim were true.
In the final analysis [yes, that's Greek too], the old rule applies:
know your audience, and use words that the audience will understand.
It doesn't matter where the words came from. Any attempt to limit
your text to words derived from only one of the historic strands of
English is a pointless exercise. It's all English now, whether it
came from Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Greek, Norman French, Dutch, Hindi,
Chinese...
JH
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