Latin

[Carmine Colacino]

> I cannot restrain myself, a german speaker, from throwing one half cent
> into this, it seems, never-ending debate!
>
> I was surprised how well and how nicely the latin heritage is cultivated
> by the american (english-speaking) scientists on this list!
>
> This clearly contradicts Carmine's assumptions.

Actually, I only noticed that some native speakers on English on this list
were wondering about the usefulness of Latin. Of course I was only referring
to these messages, and not to the whole community of American
(English-speaking) scientists... This fact doesn't contradict my
assumptions, but only the way you turned what I said :-)


>>Carmine Colacino wrote:
>>
>>> Botany uses Latin (in a limited extent anyway), and I notice that the
>>> persons wondering about its usefulness are often native speakers of English,
>>> which I think is very annoying. After all, everybody else makes an effort to
>>> learn English, and, it appears, English-speakers (or some of them) complain
>>> of having to learn not a whole language, but just a little bit of a
>>> specialized botanical language derived from Latin (I mean, it is not even
>>> the whole Latin language).
>>
>>There may be some thruth in this, but fortunately not all English
>>speakers are alike in this respect.

What you say it is true. Indeed, I didn't dare to refer to such a variegate
reality as "All English speakers" in the generalized way you assume
(wrongly) I did... :-)

Regards.

--
Dr. Carmine Colacino
Herbarium Lucanum & Dept. of Biology
University of Basilicata
85100 Potenza, southern Italy
e-mail: colacino at unibas.it
url: http://www.unibas.it/utenti/colacino/mediterraneo.html