Latin Chauvinism

Originally published at Searching for the Young Soul Rebel. You can comment here or there.

My guitarist is in this habit of getting high and then, sometimes at least, going on about how all Indo-European languages are derived from Latin. I've had to carefully explain to him how Greek and Latin are two very different languages, though Latin had adopted many Greek loan-words and only a handful of the Greek alphabet (and even "a handful" is a generous term), and I don't even think that completely sank in.

His latest insistence of Latin language dominance is that GERMAN IS DERIVED FROM LATIN.

o_O

Have you ever made that face in-person? It hurts like hell, but sometimes that's the only real way to get a point across.

His evidence?

"German uses the Latin alphabet."

Yes, this, gentle readers, is my guitarist's "proof" that German is Latin in origin.

My retort:

"Dude, of course German uses the Latin alphabet! Have you ever tried reading Teutonic runes? The alphabet isn't proof of anything. Irish Gaelig is closest to Sanskrit in origin but uses the Latin alphabet because Ogham is ten times as illegible without at least ten years of constant instruction."

He didn't really have anything to say to that, and then had to pull up a video by The Coral on YouTube.

I think I'm going to have to start bringing an mp3 recorder to band practise because so much of what this boy says is so sample-worthy for This Is Where the Fish Lives. He'll be like my "fifth Beatle"!