h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Codepage 850, Multi-Lingual (Latin I)
852, Slavic (Latin II)

So possibly *somebody* thought the character set of some use still?

But do you need to learn Latin to understand roots, not just learn root understanding?

...do you need to understand roots ?

There's no mystery about the codepages. The letters that we are writing in now are called "Latin letters" or "Roman letters". This distinguishes them from Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew etc, which look totally different.

tanzen: Not the question I asked.

Why ICL thought I had to learn CESIL before BASIC I'll never know. Just give me a list of concepts, whats input, whats process, whats output and I'm happy. But that's not human language... If the idea of learning latin was to learn a global language, I think its a great idea, never really understood why Esp. came about when latin does the job, plus understanding actual derivatives becomes simpler.

Gnomon: Wanted to show _even_ in the 20th century, latin is not cloistered away.

Jab: Sure we use the Latin alphabet, but that doesn't mean we have to learn Latin. We use Indian numbers, but most of us don't speak Indian.

You don't need to learn Latin to learn roots for constructing words in English. You could just learn a big list of common Latin words.

Tanzen: do you need to understand roots? It can be very useful for recognising words you have never seen before.

I agree with Tanzen, Latin give you the opportunity to translate boring or non-sensical (sp?) phrased to look posh. I work in a college and over one of our office doors is the phrase "canus meus id comedit" loosley translated from "my dog ate it".

From Today's Metro:

The word sausage comes from the Latin word salsicia, which means salted or preserved. Sausages were the first convienance food as they preserved meat that could not be eaten fresh. They may have been invented by the ancient Greeks as they feature in Homer's Odessey: "The cook turns a sausage, big with blood."

that sounds more like black pudding to me

does this still do the rounds amoungst latin learners then?

"Latin's a dead language
As dead as can be.
First it killed the Romans
And now it's killing me!"

which sprung uncalled for from my memory banks whilst reading this.

"Latin's a dead language
As dead as can be.
First it killed the Romans
And now it's killing me!"

Latina est morte lingua
mortissima
prime Romas necat
et nunc meum feriens est!

Very good!

Am I the only person reminded of the "Romans go home" bit in Life of Brian ??

He's been a very naughty boy, and he's not coming out tomorrow, either

Follow the gourd!!!

Always look on the bright side of life

(Think we'd better sneak off before they accuse us of highjacking their thread)

It was sleeping for a week...I just woke it up for a chat

I admire your consideration. The thread must not be allowed to go unused.

And we were just proving that Latin is not a dead language...by leaving the thread to die....

How noble of you. The thread must not go the way of Latin.

Aye...poor...dear thread...it lives and breaths for us...an dthen we just shun it so cruelly...so thoughtlessly......

How can we live with ourselves? How do we sleep at night Or in my case work at night and sleep during the day.

We must do something. I know The save the latin page charity. Bring it to people's attention Shamwe them into contributiing. What you think Huh? The page might just be saved!!!
Land of ope & Glory