The reason I entitled the last article “Icthysauri” instead of Icthysaurs was because they lived a hundred million years ago. I am an educated man so I know they spoke Latin and Greek back then.
Like so much I say that sounds like a joke, this is taken seriously in academia. “Dinosaur” means giant lizard, but a Norwegian who called himself Linaeus — not a typical Norwegian name — developed a way of naming species based on Latin and Greek, which was the language of scholars in his day, hence his own name.
It is every bit as reasonable to say that Lastin and Greek are the international languages today as to say that the Icthysaurs spoke Greek.
Yes, but the word “dinosaur” is international. So everybody knows what it means so you can use it in any language.
Nice try, but what about the REST of the article you are writing? It won’t be in ancient Greek, so what’s the point?
I remember when I was embarrassed out of my wits by a multilingual German asking me why, if Americans were going to use untranslated French quotes, they didn’t just go ahead and write the book in French?
It was emabarrassing for me to explain that the author COULDN’T write the book in French and even if he could the readers who were bursting with pride that they had taken high school French and owned a dictionary couldn’t read the book if he did.
I don’t think he ever really believed that any adult, much less a scholar, could be that silly.
In German there are no big words. Since my subject back then was brick, I know the German word for “refractory,” a material that can withstand huge and rapid temperature changes, is Temperaturwechselbestandigkeit, which looks huge.
But Temperatur means temperature, wechself means “change,” bestandig means the ability to stand against, and keit is a the ending to such a combination, which indicates that if you put it all together you get what the stuff is. Temperaturwechselbestandigkeit can be understood by any adult German. He doesn’t have to go to a dictionary.
So why do doctors have to speak Latin? Why do they spend so much precious time learning words they have to go to a dictionary to look up?
Because it SOUNDS good. It ups their fees.
An icthysaur was an ancient reptile fish.
That wasn’t hard, was it?
#1 by joe rorke on 11/18/2005 - 8:27 pm
I’ve never understood how anyone could suggest what existed hundreds of thousands of years ago….or a million years ago….or 10,000 years ago….or 50,000 years ago. Especially, when they talk about the history of the various periods on the face of the earth. They tell me what happened and what didn’t happen and what such and such a person was thinking. How much truth is told even about the war between the states in the USA? I don’t know. How much falsehood is told? I don’t know. I took a course once in world history. I was thrilled at the opportunity. At least my professor was a gentile. He wasn’t arrogant. I could talk to him. He knew my questions were sincere. I had a fair degree of life experience at the time and was much older than the average student. I was fairly used to presenting cases so I asked him, “Dr. Whoever, how can you possibly know what happened so many years ago? I know you weren’t there. Neither was I. I talk to people all the time who can’t give me evidence of what happened last week and you talk about these historical figures as if you know them personally. I just get a feeling there’s a few liars in there somewhere and there goes your case. According to me.” I wasn’t picking on him. He was a swell guy. I was asking an honest question. To me, it’s like that old fish story. A fellow catches a fish and tells folks it was 12″ long. Every week he tells the story to somebody else. Each week the fish is longer. After 3 months the fish is 9 yards long. I immensely love history. But I love truth even more.
#2 by Mark on 11/19/2005 - 12:22 am
“To me, it’s like that old fish story. A fellow catches a fish and tells folks it was 12″ long. Every week he tells the story to somebody else. Each week the fish is longer. After 3 months the fish is 9 yards long.”
This answers a lot of questions actually. I’ll betcha’ ol’ Jonah stuck his foot in a pond one day, got his big toe caught in the mouth of a catfish, and with time it went from fish to whale.
#3 by Richard L. Hardison on 11/19/2005 - 9:53 am
I know what Temperatur and bestandig are, so what is wechsel?
#4 by Elizabeth on 11/19/2005 - 6:12 pm
Doctors and lawyers use Latin because, until about five hundred years ago,
almost all doctors and lawyers were members of the priesthood.
#5 by Bob on 11/21/2005 - 5:12 pm
Richard, wechsel is change.
Or, as a German would say, change is wechsel.
#6 by Peter on 11/22/2005 - 1:02 am
Many Jews are named Wechsler because so many were/are money changers.