And lo on Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:30:01 -0000, Hildur K.  
<hil### [at] 3dcafemailevery1net> did spake, saying:

> "Phil Cook" <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote:
>> And lo on Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:56:28 -0000, Hildur K.
>> <hil### [at] 3dcafemailevery1net> did spake, saying:
>
>
>> And make note of that "anarchic" you just used; an-archy. So Xerocracy  
>> is
>> rule through photocopiers whereas Xeroarchy is where you're ruled by a
>> photocopier.
>
> Good point. Thanks for pointing that one out for me. Never thought about  
> the difference between -cracy and -archy. It´s subtle but the way you  
> put it, it becomes quite clear.

Though the meaning in common usage has become blurred which is  
understandable. Some words drop out of use or are subsumed into others I  
think I've mentioned somewhere my use of the word manufactory, which a  
collegue didn't believe was a real word; it's been replaced by the  
all-purpose "factory" instead.

>> Especially since those terms are either Latin or Ancient Greek :-) We do
>> like grabbing words from other languages and adding them to our own in a
>> unique way. It helps that our own 'default' language is such a  
>> hodge-podge of other languages.

Did you like hodge-podge? I could have used mish-mash instead.

> Yes, I did learn some Latin, but I skipped Greek, had Spanish instead.  
> Maybe that was a mistake.. don´t know.

Except the number of people in this country who learn either Greek or  
Latin is prevalent only for public (paying) schools, lawyers and doctors.  
If you're learning English as a non-native language it might help to  
puzzle out the meaning of some words.

> I think I remember correctly they told us that about 52% of the English  
> language
> is inherited (partly through French) from Latin and Greek and the rest is
> Germanic.

Which in theory should make the British all polyglots except we aren't. I  
could point to the fact we're a bunch of xenophobic islanders, but I hope  
the real reason is due to the differences in the underlying structure of  
our language. We can thank the Normans in the 11th century for not  
imposing their language on the commoners, so English evolved bottom-up  
rather then top-down and things like la le tu vous and suffixes were  
dropped or simplified.

Don't get me wrong we've still got some strangness and some words have  
special cases (the plural of mouse is not mouses but mice, the plural of  
sheep is sheep and not sheeps) and spelling is horrendous compared to  
speech thanks to both The Great Vowel Shift and regional dialects. For  
example for most words the past tense use it to add -ed, so own and owned,  
but then you have keep and kept because the -ed and -t sound the same and  
that's just how they got written down. I'm not even going to mention win  
and won :-)

> My language is mostly Germanic, so those 48% are rather easy to figure  
> out. But those 52% can be a drag. I spent years and years with the old  
> faithful Oxford dictionary by my side. Do you have any idea how many  
> words start with con- in that dictionary?

Or com-, again why is it im-possible rather then un-possible or even  
in-possible they're perfectly logical constructs; they just sound wrong.

> Thank god for on-line dictionaries. They are life-(and time-) savers :-)

Oh yes except the ones that insist in refering to American-English as  
English :-P

To quote the great Buffy when instructing Giles

Buffy: "Speak English, not whatever they speak in, um...."
Giles: "England?"

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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