Jack,

Right. English is a Germanic language, not a Romance language like Italian, French, Spanish and Romanian. Latin and Greek snuck in and form the majority of our medical and legal terms but when Churchill gave his famous "we will never surrender" speech he was careful not to include a single Latin reference, keeping the spirit of resistance alive with purely Saxon words, the root of English culture of resistance, back to the days of Alfred. But both English, Latin and Persian, for example, are all part of the Indo-European Language group, ie, the group of languages spoke by the Aryan tribes who wandered from India to the west, who spoke a proto Sanskrit language. The majority of English root words, some 800 or so, are not Latin or Greek but Sanskrit based. My understanding of the Normans is they did indeed try to force the peasants speak French and that it was their intent to eliminate English, but after 3 centuries it was the ruling classes who were speaking English. This means to me that the customs and culture of the people are usually more powerful than the force a centralized state can impose on them. The true rebellious English language, but so creative in how it evolved, especially during the time of the Tudor/Stuarts. I heard Robert McCrum say that English has about 500,000 words in it whereas French and Russian have under 100,000. English is truly the Global language.

And let us not forget the influence of the Irish in maintaining classical culture through the dark ages as explained in Thomas Cahill's "How the Irish Saved Civilization", part of his 5 book series called "The Hinges of History".

Asimov presents the Old Testament version of the three big language groups of the middle east as being represented by the three sons of Noah, Japeth, Shem and Ham, ie, the Indo-European (or Aramean), Semitic and Hamitic language groups. Both Arabs and Jews are Semites, Persians and Indians are Indo-Europeans. So I guess we are speaking a Japethian language.

Last Edited By: GT49er 01/06/13 04:00 PM. Edited 1 times.