Warlock/Wizard - was Asking JKR just one question

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 119436


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboyminn at y...> wrote:

bboyminn:
 
<snip>

> The best I can come up with is something cultural. Maybe it's not 
East
> vs West, maybe it's North vs South, or possibly slightly archaic vs
> modern. Or, rather than regional, as I suggested, maybe it's based 
on
> language origins. French, Spanish, English, and Italian have strong
> origins in Latin, but I suspect German and similar languages have
> their origins elsewhere. Maybe it's aristocratic vs common 
language. 

Geoff:
Continuing my odds and ends....

French, Spanish and Italian - and also Portuguese and Romanian among 
others - are the so-called Romance group which have developed, as you 
say, from Latin. German and associated languages developed from the 
Teutonic group. English, because of its Anglo-Saxon ancestry and the 
strong influence of French after 1066, is a bit of a half-blood. :-) 
It has links to both sides which is why it is such an expressive 
language and also a darned difficult one for non-native speakers to 
master.

Interestingly though, there is a link between Old English and Latin 
with "loga". This sometimes happens in the two groups but usually in 
words which refer to new developments and are borrowed. ("Window" in 
many langauaes is an example). In modern German also, the verb "to 
lie" is "luegen" (which should correctly have an umlaut rather than 
an "e" but !Yahoo doesn't want to know about it....