Sounds like Greek to me

[Ann Anderson Evans]

Interesting comment.  How can one language be "richer" than another?  Greek
benefits from having several levels, from the ancient forms to modern, very
formal ones, to local dialects, but does not have the rich admixture of
words and forms from other languages as French and Italian do.  Italian has
grown farther away from its ancient Latin roots than has Greek, but still
retains a link to its ancient origins.  France had a vibrant literature
throughout the Middle Ages and onward which contributes to its modern
"richness" as well.  Greece did not.

As for being more challenging to master -- what makes it more challenging
than, say, German, which has several declensions, or Hungarian, which has
even more?  Challenging to whom?  It is only challenging because it is
different from ours, but there are hundreds and hundreds of languages which
are even more different -- Finnish, Basque, virtually all of the African
languages, virtually all of the Asian languages, etc. etc.  Compared to
Chinese, it's a snap.

Ann

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 12:31 PM, Ronald Kephart <rkephart at unf.edu> wrote:

> On 12/11/08 11:36 AM, "Harold Schiffman" <haroldfs at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The Greek language is far richer than French or Italian, but it's much
> > more challenging to master.
>
> I always thought Greek was as easy as pi.
>
> Ron
>
>
>
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