Sunday, July 24, 2005

Wandering Wikipedia

Once again a large chunk of the evening was spent looking for something cool to put up here. And once again the vastness of the Internet wasteland got to me again. It seems I spent a fair amount of time reading up on English over at Wikipedia (which in my opinion is one of the greatest Internet resources out there). Not only did I learn that Scots (not to be confused with Gaelic) is the closest living language to English but I scored this quote aboute our common language:
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. -James D. Nicoll

Any amount of time spent at Wikipedia leads me all over the place inside that site. It truly is astounding how much information is there and it continues to grow constantly. For instance, who had any idea there is an English, Indiana? And that after the six floods between 1955 and 1990 it was decided to relocate the town? I would never have know that. Well may father might eventually bring it up but I doubt it.

Futhermore, the article on Hoosier is quite interesting (a Hoosier is someone from Indiana if you're not familiar with the term). I take great delight in the fact that there is no definitive origin of the word. In fact it makes me somewhat proud to be of Hoosier descent.

1 comment:

GCU of paradox said...

I recently watched a documentry called Word Wars. It follows the lives of four people and builds as they prepare for the National Scrabble campionships. Anyway, one of the guys goes into a bit of a schpiel about how the screwed up the English language is because basically took whatever it wanted from all these different sources.

Well, your post reminded of it and I thought I would recommend the movie. It's worth a watch.