Liguistics/quotes (OT carried from main list)

[grey_wolf_c]

> Gretchen:
> > About 90% of English words (and most European languages for that 
> > matter) have roots in the latin language.  That is why the Latin 
> > derivitive is so important or could be so important.
> > 
> > 
> Eloise:
> Are you sure about that? I understood that about 50% of the words in 
> common usage derive from Old English, which is a Germanic tongue. Of 
> course, if you include scientific, technical and medical terms, the 
> results are going to be skewed significantly towards Greek and Latin. 
> French, Italian and Spanish have much higher Latin quotients than
> English, I would venture.

I make no pretence to know of linguistics, anymore than what my 
fly-paper mind has manged to catch over the years, but I'm 100% sure 
that Gretchen's affirmation is *false*. There is *no* way that the 
English contains a 90% of Latin words. And I know because the Spanish 
percentage of German words is about 10%, and it's a Romance language, 
which means that it's considered an evolution of Latin, which English 
is not. 

I'm nowhere sure of this numbers, but I think that actual Latin-evolved 
words in Spanish are some 55-60%. About a 20-25% is Arabic, a 10% 
Germanic and the rest a mix-and-match of different Languages (which is 
currently gaining ground thanks to *American* words such as "láser", 
"rádar", "CD-ROM", etc.). Not even throwing especialized language into 
the fray would scale Latin up to 90% (although it would give it a big 
heave, if my parent's medical dictionaries are proof).

And since Spanish has much more Latin than English has, there is no way 
the 90% figure can be sustained. The closest language to Latin (appart 
from Ecclesiastical Latin) is Italian, and I doubt *they* have a 90% 
figure, either -although I don't know, since I've never seen the 
figure. I'd say, however, that the invasions of Germanics in the 
post-Western-Roman-Empire and later the invasions of Turks and Spanish 
should've introduced new vocabulary into the language.

Ginny wrote:
> "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable 
> from magic." Arthur C. Clarke [edited for clarity]

There's even a corolary to that one:
"Any technology distinguisable from magic is insufuciently advanced"
Gregory Benford

The CS mind that drives me likes the second one particularly, since 
that's the phylosophy that gets pounded into you when attending 
Computer Systems Design. I found it somewhat inmoral, but the user 
actually demands it, and since he's the one that's giving the money, we 
have to do what he wants.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf, who is in great spirits today since the university he's 
going to next year hasn't completely *forgotten* about him: at least he 
still receives the generic information packages