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From: mikulska@comet.Princeton.EDU (Margaret Mikulska)
Subject: Re: Esperanto? The EU? (Very, very long)
Message-ID: <1995Mar22.013807.9711@Princeton.EDU>
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Reply-To: mikulska@astro.princeton.edu (Margaret Mikulska)
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Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 01:38:07 GMT
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In article <3k56c8$rql@news.halcyon.com> Bruce McMenomy <mcmenomy@halcyon.com> writes:
> 
>  On the other hand, though I am very fond of Latin, I would question
>that it would make a very good language for dealing with contemporary
>world situations, if only because the first thing you would have to do
>would be to fit it out with about 100,000 new vocabulary items to
>deal with things that have developed since the classical language was
>last in currency.  Even if the Vatican has been trying to keep this
>up to date (mostly for its own, non-technical purposes [aside from the 
>technical language of theology], I think this would prove a grotesque
>and nearly impossible job.

How did Hebrew deal with the necessity of creating new words?  As far as
I know, until fairly recently Hebrew was in a similar situation as Latin
is now: used for liturgy, but not for down-to-earth, everyday purposes.
And yet it is now spoken just like any other so-called living language,
so a very large number of new words must have been created.  Was it "a
grotesque and nearly impossible job"?  I don't think so, but my knowledge
of Hebrew could be charitably called "a nodding acquaintance", so I'm
not in a position to judge. 

On the other hand, a lot of new vocabulary items created in European
languages in the last few centuries are based on Latin roots anyway.
Not that I would like Latin to be _the_ language of Europe (Europe is
multicultural and multilingual and doesn't need a common language), but
I don't think Bruce's objections are entirely valid.

-Margaret Mikulska

