Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 03:13:38 -0400 From: "Thomas M. Sommers" <tms2@mail.ptd.net> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Spellings Message-ID: <38F2D0A2.FE71D033@mail.ptd.net> References: <20000404152346.01398@techunix.technion.ac.il> <20000407202917.A1417@sys3.physics.iisc.ernet.in> <xzpitxtq1k5.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <20000407233952.A1610@theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in> <8cq06a$1le0$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de>
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Christian Weisgerber wrote: > > Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> wrote: > > > By the way, I think one reason for the confusing nature of English > > spellings is that it has imported words from languages all over the > > world, often with little modification in spelling if the original > > script was the same, and it continues to do so. > > First, I think the tendency of English to pick up loans is > overstated. > A whole lot of words imported during the colonial period and > referring to foreign plants, animals, and cultures are actually in > pan-European use. English was reshaped by the large influx of > Romance vocabulary after the Norman invasion, but that has been a > historical event for a few centuries now. The mass importation of Latin words did not begin until the 16th century. As for the number of words, the OED has many more entries than any comparable dictionary for other languages. English often has several words for a single concept when other languages will have only one. This allows nuances to be expressed by word choice to a greater extent than other languages allow. As an aside, I wonder whether other European languages took the words you refer to from the "colonies" directly, or from English. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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