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[Jackrabbit]

I want to learn Latin. God only knows why, because I haven't figured it out yet.

[CJ1145]

Well, Latin is fun because

A) The words sound cool

B) Nobody in the public knows it

Which is a big boon to writers. In one of my stories I named a group of super-mutants with Neo-esque powers and love of trenchcoats The Validus. As far as I know, it's a very butchered word meaning "powerful". The way I figure it, most people won't know what it means, and those that do will be too busy enjoying the in-joke to think about how I ruined the word.

As for your question, Jackrabbit, something about certain words just sounds off to me, I can't explain better than that.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

well, portuguese, italian and spanish derive directly from latin, mst people with knowledge of these languages have atleast a basic understanding of latin

[chaoticag]

Quick update: http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/

The Lenski E. Coli Experiment has recently reached 50,000 generations. Go experiment!

[Grakelin]

well, portuguese, italian and spanish derive directly from latin, mst people with knowledge of these languages have atleast a basic understanding of latin

Exactly, just like how anybody with knowledge of English has at least a basic understanding of French and German.

[MrWiggles]

well, portuguese, italian and spanish derive directly from latin, mst people with knowledge of these languages have atleast a basic understanding of latin

Exactly, just like how anybody with knowledge of English has at least a basic understanding of French and German.

Shouldn't that be German to French and English? I'm pretty sure German the parent langauge there.

[Grakelin]

I was under the impression it was a combined effort between the two acts of coincidence

[MrWiggles]

I was under the impression it was a combined effort between the two acts of coincidence

Possibly. I know that English is the youngest out of the three of them, and that German has more partenal influence then french does on English.

[RAM]

the coran can be counted as the last tome

What do you mean by "last tome"?

[Pathos]

I am an atheist because I hate religions because they promote cannonballism.

[Jackrabbit]

Hey, we're not all Cannonballs!

[RAM]

Religions predate the cannonball, which proves that they caused it!

[Sir Pseudonymous]

I was under the impression it was a combined effort between the two acts of coincidence

Possibly. I know that English is the youngest out of the three of them, and that German has more partenal influence then french does on English.

Well, specifically, English is the product of an old-german speaking populace being ruled by a french speaking one for a decent period of time, leaving it with germanic grammar and a (relative) handful of the most common words, with words rooted in french making up of the less-common-but-still-relatively-common lexicon. And then about 99% of what's left (which is the vast majority of the language as a whole) was taken directly from latin by scholars who needed new terms for things, with a little greek thrown in.

[Phmcw]

French is a Latin language. English and German are Germanic. So French should be with Italian, Spanish, Romanian, ...

[RAM]

I suspect that this is starting to venture off of the topic, even for religion...

Shouldn't an all-knowing god have foreseen all this concern over the translations of holy texts and made a set in Modern English, probably the most popularly accepted language since Latin? Give someone a fey mood and have them buried then to be discovered now. Living languages tend to drift a fair bit, even if a book was written in the same language that is being used centuries later it would still require a historian and linguist to derive accurate meaning from it.