Reflections, etc--Another point of view...

[Salinas17 at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/20/06 5:32:31 PM, language at sprynet.com writes:
<< Linguistics has become a talking shop for talking about language and not 
learning foreign ones! >>

I have picked up a few useful phrases at the Armenian market.  But there we 
mainly "talk about language," e.g., my new friends there ask me why English 
doesn't look anything like it sounds?  

I tell them it's because English was once a foreign language, too.  But when 
the Brits learned it, they never really figured out how to get the sounds to 
match up with the letters.  So, bad spelling became a kind of time-honored 
tradition.  Then they shake their heads -- philosophically -- and say "Ah, yes, 
that sounds like the British..."  

Then we have a contest to see who knows the most esoteric verb-endings in 
Latin.

Steve Long