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Pastimes : Short Stories - 50 words or less -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kid Rock who wrote (1161)	11/16/1999 12:23:00 PM
From: PCModem	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2633

Hi Thomas! The short answer us that English is really a "European Creole" made up of a mixture of Greek and Latin vocabulary (which came into English through the French primarily thanks to the Norman Invasion) built on a base of German (thanks to those Norse invaders) and Anglo-Saxon grammar and basic vocabulary. The reason we spell words the way we do (this is very over-simplified) is because of a commitment among the academic leaders over the centuries to preserve the "evidence" of the derivation of our words. For instance, take our word "telephone." English is the only modern language that I know of that spells it with a "ph" instead of an "f." Why? To preserve the fact that PHONE is derived from a Greek word beginning with the letter "phi" (looks like an "o" with a vertical line through it). Everyone else in the Indo-European Language world uses an "f" because that letter represents the sound. The silent "e" at the end of so many of our English words used to be pronounced. Now it is retained to indicate that the preceding vowel is long (prounced the same as its name). Thus the "o" in "phone" is prounced like the name of the letter: "oh." For an example of what could happen to English if the English speaking world agreed to modernize the spelling of the language, read about the history of Russian after the revolution...they reformed the spelling of the language and reduced the number of letters in the alphabet. Net result was that everything written before the revolution was to a certain extent unreadable by those trained under the new system. I understand the Communist Chinese did something similar, with the same result -- a very effective way to control who reads what. Fascinating stuff! (to me anyway, grin) I love words! PCM