Does this ever happen to you?

[Happydude]

Originally posted by Shooter
Correct spelling: antidisestablishmentarianism.

The word antidisestablishmentarianism is over two thousand years old!

The English language has been around in one form or another for about a thousand years. That may seem like a long time, but, as languages go, that's not very long at all. Other languages were around long before english, and most of the words we use today come from one of those other, older, languages.

English gets most of its roots, suffixes and prefixes from two main languages: Greek and Latin. The root and pretty much all of the prefixes and suffixes of antidisestablishmentarianism come from Latin. Most of the words and word parts that we use for numbers come from Greek, like the prefix "dek" or "dec," which means ten (a decade is a period of ten years; a decathelon is a sports event which combines ten different sports; December used to be the tenth month of the year before some guys in ancient Rome added August and July to honor their Caesars, Augustus and Julius). Other languages which we have "stolen" words or word fragments from include Germanic (from a part of Europe which today includes Germany, Hungary, and a few other countries) and Arabic.

If you had grown up a hundred years ago, one of the things you'd probably have to learn in school is Latin (if you got to go to school at all!). This would allow you to read what some people still consider the "important" books of human history in the language in which they were written. It would also help you recognize some of the most important roots, prefixes and suffixes which we still use.

quite you!