English benefactors?
I would like to comment on Mr. Cookson's Dec. 19 letter titled English pillaging Latin or Greek?.
Mr. Cookson's public display of his past studies of Latin and Greek doesn't impress me all that much since I studied these languages in Rome -- the cradle of classical culture.
A learned man like Mr. Cookson shouldn't give himself up to uncalled for assertions as he did. For instance, I've never claimed to be a pundit of the English language. On the contrary, in my previous letter I repeatedly asserted that my scarce knowledge of English is the maximum I can grant to a language that I write and speak only when I'm obliged to.
All languages have had their own origin before developing and evolving. What I'm asserting is right unless Mr. Cookson could prove that when the Romans went to Britannia, the local tribes were already speaking English.
Mr. Cookson cannot pretend to correlate on the same level the influence of Latin on the English and Italian languages. While English was obliged to resort to Latin for becoming a language, the Italian language comes straight from Latin. Should Mr. Cookson read his old books, he would easily discover that before the coming of the volgare language, the only language spoken in Italy was the Latin language.
Saying that Latin and Greek were like benefactors to a less sophisticated language misrepresents the meaning of the word itself. In fact, Mr. Cookson could easily teach me that "benefactor" (from the Latin benefactus+or/benefacere) means "one that gives help or confers a benefit" which presumes an explicit purpose of the granter. In this case, neither Latin nor Greek "intentionally" conferred any benefit to any languages.
As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Cookson's sentence "Leave English to the English" breaks down a wide door. To me, while on the one hand English people are free to speak to each other using their own perfect language, on the other hand we, the non-English, would be content to be left in peace to use the language as we like or as we are able to, without being criticized by obsessed critics or pretentious purists.
PIERO RONCI
Jakarta