Comment by Unseen on January 7, 2013 at 9:56pm

I've amazed people on several occasions with facts such that "Engish is a germanic language" or that "English can be traced back to Indian Sanskrit and shares an amazing amount of similarities." In the case of the latter, I can cite examples such as that our our English words "right," and "rite" can both be traced back to the Sanskrit word "rita" which has a few related meanings such as law, order, propriety, and truth. 

But Heather is right, too. English is a whore among languages. Unlike French, for example, which prizes linguistic purity and decries the intrusion of outside words, English gladly adopts both words and concepts from other languages. This gives English by far the largest vocabulary of any language and has made it pretty much the lingua franca or universal language.

Comment by Kir Komrik on January 8, 2013 at 5:33pm

Hey  प्रमोद शाही,

Have you heard of an earlier, hypothesized language that preceded PIE? It was put forth by some academics in Russia. Thanks for the diagram.

- kk

Comment by Bram Meuris on March 22, 2013 at 11:34am

Unseen, you might want to read this article (among others) before making such general claims :) http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/06/counting_words

Comment by Unseen on March 22, 2013 at 2:57pm

Oh, man, I feel so put down and humiliated. 

Comment by प्रमोद शाही on March 22, 2013 at 5:35pm

Computer languages ?

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