Hi Folks,
On Wed, 2 Apr 2003 06:19:41 +1000, Sam Ewalt wrote:
> Latin is of limited usefulness and hard to learn I'm told.
You have been told correctly.
> English
> is the de facto international language now and the second language
> of choice around the world. If people want to communicate, do business
> internationally, study the latest advances in science, medicine,
> engineering, the arts, then they will learn English.
> People are doing that with great enthusiasm all over the world.
Some non-English countries have made English the official language
of the whole country - e.g. Kenya, where I grew up - because it means
there is one lingua franca instead of many, many tribal languages, as
well as the commercial sense in using a language of international
business.
> This certainly isn't because of any inherent virtue in the language
> or in it's native speakers but because it's so useful and of obvious
> economic benefit.
One benefit of using English as a second language is that it has the
fortunate virtue that you can get the grammer in an awful mess, but you
will usually be understood. This is absolutely NOT the case with a
strict language like Latin.
BTW: Anybody thought of declining VIRUS ?
- virus
vire
virum
virii
viro
viro
virii
virii
viros
virorum
viris
viris
Any Latin scholars want to comment ?
Regards,
Ron
Ron Clarke
http://homepages.valylink.net.au/~ausreg/index.html
http://tadpole.aus.as
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