Paul;

Latin may be "dead" but over 200,000 words in the English language derived from it as well as to name a few, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Romanian. These are sometimes called the “vernacular forms of Latin”. Latin may be a dead language but it lives on and is doing well. By the way I am glad I studied Latin and Greek in Catholic school as well as English. Today the children who attend school in this country are at a disadvantage when it comes to learning. Terms like, “you know what I mean” say it all.

Tom

>>Actually, I dislike the general degrading of the english language I've seen over the last 40-50 years. >
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>>I'm not sure what one can do about this lack of intellectual discipline as society has all but abandoned any kind of desire for 'exactness' in using the language.
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> I'm of the opinion that if language doesn't evolve, change, etc. to suit the times, it's going to die. Want a language that's more "exact" and not changing? Try Latin. Having said that, it DOES bother me that simple things like sentence structure seems to be going the way of the dinosaur. I don't care so much that the meaning of words is changing, but I think communication gets vastly more difficult when people can't even put two words together in a coherent thought. It may be that since programming demands attention to syntax, it draws in people who think sentences should make syntactical sense (now that's an interested sentence) ;-) I've gotten so many e-mails from people that are practically incomprehensible that I'm amazed they can brush their teeth w/o poking their eyes out. There is definitely something to be said for clarity of thought and the ability to be able to convey that thought in writing.
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>One person here that does a great job of conveying his thoughts is Ed Rauh. He does an amazing job with his usage of the language <g>