[lit-ideas] Re: Latin: The Universal Language
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 18:47:09 -0700
And how would this affect the Chinese language? They make up a fifth of the
planet's
population If Latin disappeared, they probably wouldn't even notice.
India is another fifth.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian" <cabrian@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 4:05 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Latin: The Universal Language
> Excerpt:
> ...something like 75 percent of the multisyllabic words in the
> English lexicon come from Latin, or from Greek via Latin, or from
> Latin via French. As I put it to my students, if Yiddish were erased
> from contemporary English we'd have a hard time talking about bagels,
> pastrami, klutzes, and schmucks. If we dumped Dutch, we'd be without
> cookies, Yankees, bundles, and booms. If we bid au revoir to Hindi,
> we'd be at a loss when contemplating bandannas, cheetahs, jungles,
> and shampoo. If we said aloha to Congolese we'd have a tough time
> ruminating on funky gorillas, zebra zombies, and mojo boogie. Sans
> Arabic, we wouldn't know about algebra, algorithms, and almanacs. But
> if Latin died in our mouths, we'd just stop talking
>
> http://www.christianitytoday.com/books/features/bookwk/050523.html
>
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