From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Apr 7 11:10:29 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in (theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in [144.16.71.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 2755C37BA30 for ; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 11:10:21 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rsidd@theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in) Received: (qmail 1625 invoked by uid 211); 7 Apr 2000 18:09:53 -0000 Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 23:39:53 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan To: Dag-Erling Smorgrav Cc: Christian Weisgerber , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Spellings [was Re: BSDCon East] Message-ID: <20000407233952.A1610@theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in> References: <20000404152346.01398@techunix.technion.ac.il> <8cgj1a$313f$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> <8cj1cg$1gse$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> <20000407202917.A1417@sys3.physics.iisc.ernet.in> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0.1i In-Reply-To: ; from des@flood.ping.uio.no on Fri, Apr 07, 2000 at 07:10:50PM +0200 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > > that's "etymological". > > Thanks. > > It's funny to note that while the modern spelling (and the original > Greek spelling) is without an h, the middle english spelling was > *with* an h... I didn't know that. 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. But that's also a strength, and it's at least one reason it's spoken so widely. The French are known to be touchy about imports of American words, but concepts like "hot dog" and "internet" didn't exist in France earlier, and to me it makes little sense to invent new words for these when perfectly good words for these are already in use everywhere else.... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message