On Saturday, 3 February 2018 00:19:08 GMT Wol's lists wrote: > On 02/02/18 00:08, Jack wrote: > > >> "eg", which, phonetically, is the start of the word "example". > > > > > > A non-native speaker of English, or a non-native speaker of Latin? > > And Latin's descendants (which are mutually comprehensible) are actually > the most widely spoken first language in Europe. I always thought Europe > should adopt Modern Latin (however you care to define it) as its main > official language. > > (Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian put together are very similar and are > larger than any other grouping of similar European language, excluding > perhaps Russian which is spoken mostly by non-EU nationals.)
I believe those languages, the ones descended from Latin, are called romance languages, and yes, they do have common features such as pronunciation of vowels. Having so many words derived via French from Latin, English is also a romance language to some extent. I know it's officially classed as a Germanic language, but I can't see why. There seems to be no Teutonic influence to speak of. Few words in common, very different sentence structure, ... -- Regards, Peter.
