[lit-ideas] Latin: The Universal Language

  • From: Brian <cabrian@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 18:05:32 -0500

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

------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts: