Re: Relationship Japanese-other language

On Fri, 06 Jan 2006 00:39:38 +0800, in message
<43bd4bcc_2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Zhen Lin <lowzl@xxxxxxxxxxx> caused electrons to dance and
photons to travel coherently in saying:

>(Compare English - over half the vocabulary is not native, but the
>average person wouldn't be able to tell you that beef, language,
>chocolate, tomato, skirt, disc, gung-ho, tycoon, tsunami, democracy,
>telephone, audio, bishop, automobile, and so on are all foreign in
>origin. [Respectively: French, French, French, Nahuatl, Nahuatl, Norse,
>Norse, Sino-Japanese, Japanese, Greek, Greek, Latin, Latin, Greek-Latin,
>humourously purified as either ipsomobile or autokineticon])

ITYM "French, French/Latin, Nahuatl, Nahuatl, Old Norse, Greek,
Chinese, Sino-Japanese, Japanese, Greek, Greek, Latin, Greek, and
Greek-Latin."

I have a friend who has become somewhat famous for originating
the oft-misquoted phrase: "The problem with defending the purity
of the English language is that English is about as pure as a
cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion,
English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them
unconscious and riffle [sic] their pockets for new vocabulary."
--James D. Nicoll. His view on his fame, either properly quoted
and attributed, or misquoted and mis-attributed, is summed up by
""If I had only known that was going to be my fifteen minutes of
fame, I'd have run that sucker through a spell checker and taken
more care while writing the surrounding material."

--
Doug Wickstrom <nimshubur@xxxxxxxxxxx>

"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the
country." --Marion Barry

Now filtering out all cross-posted messages and everything posted
through Google News.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Spell Catcher [was spelling checker]
    ... Greek -izein: to employ -ise is to flout etymology and logic. ... Fowler's Modern English Usage tells us: ... "-IZE, -lSE, IN VERBS. ... was a Latin or French or English imitation, ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)
  • Re: History of French
    ... > Is there not a clas of words in English whose spellings were ... > this is equivalent to the objection above) and the spelling 'sept' was the ... > Greek or Latin sources, preserve approximations to Greek and Latin spelling ... I can think of is to compare French with Italian. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Sauerstoff, sauer, Stoff
    ... French, but he coined his name for the element from Greek roots, not ... An English or French speaker who is faced with the ... English and French), thus obscuring the term's literal meaning. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: History of French
    ... >>Is there not a clas of words in English whose spellings were ... >>Greek or Latin sources, preserve approximations to Greek and Latin spelling ... > I can think of is to compare French with Italian. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • We need Language Exchange Partners, we can teach you French
    ... We can teach you French in exchange. ... Dalesa Dalima, 24 years old, France ... I want to learn: English ... Je suis une fille très dynamique, ...
    (soc.culture.belgium)