Latin lover
From John Jenkins
I enjoyed James Buchan’s review of Guy Deutscher’s The Unfolding of Language (Books, 25 June), particularly his jeu d’esprit at the expense of staider readers. I don’t know about Sanskrit, but it is certainly very witty to say that Latin is ‘richer and infinitely more expressive’ than any of its successors. He quotes Adam Smith. Quid enim? As for separating out participles from auxiliary verbs, that has come in very handy all around the world (and occurs in Latin too).
Latin more pleasing to the ear than Italian? Perhaps — if we really knew how Latin sounded (often, I suspect, rather like Italian: its colloquial constructions are very Romance — vide Petronius passim). As for the Semitic triliteral root, I do not know why Buchan thinks this is ‘the most diabolical structure in all linguistics’. Has he never come across Classical Greek Middle forms of verbs ending in -mi? Or the tonal systems of many Asian languages? Or Arabic numerals? Very clever. Keep it up.
John Jenkins
HM Consul General, British Consulate-General, Jerusalem
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