In a message dated 5/14/08 7:15:40 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> You don't wanna say, "Latin and Greek are not ancestors of English," > > Michael. > > I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. Want to try again? > > (But for the record, Latin and Greek are NOT ancestors of English, > unless you want to go back thousands of years, before there was > Germanic or Hellenic languages.) > I wasn't trying to say anything profound at that moment. But I'll try again anyway. If, of your sixteen great-great-grandparents, nine were Germanic, three were Italian, three were Greek, and one was Chinese, it would seem wrong to me to say Italians, Greeks and Chinese were not among your ancestors. Given that your subject is prepositions, I should grant at once most of the specific prepositions in English do indeed come linguistically from Germanic roots. But the alleged generic "article of speech", the preposition, wasn't unique to Germanic -- it existed in Latin and Greek -- and other early languages. The more polyllabic the English word, the more likely it is to have come down through Latin and Greek. Again, however, the central thrust of my original response to you was the citing of activity that involves much "thought" that is never verbalize by the thinker. I picture an engineer in he bowels of a ship just hit by a torpedo ************** Wondering what's for Dinner Tonight? Get new twists on family favorites at AOL Food. (http://food.aol.com/dinner-tonight?NCID=aolfod00030000000001)
