Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: rbowman Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Recent history of vi Date: 7 Dec 2025 19:44:01 GMT Lines: 24 Message-ID: References: <10ga6r1$7ph$1@news.misty.com> <10gpatq$jpt$3@news.misty.com> <69334624$0$11430$426a74cc@news.free.fr> <10h175s$2b64m$19@dont-email.me> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net /fjgDFQCksLGtcK+kCaowQ6FwrAkzB8pAzL5NtywUk881PsP5z Cancel-Lock: sha1:HjPm89vti+nKz7+24OzzchCTIgU= sha256:kBf11VxrwrDqdNEPIgHspunVFOy7yHaO/jJ3ICQoOkA= User-Agent: Pan/0.162 (Pokrosvk) Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:78422 alt.folklore.computers:232418 On Sun, 07 Dec 2025 19:12:40 GMT, Scott Lurndal wrote: > rbowman writes: >>On Sun, 7 Dec 2025 16:31:23 +0100, Alexander Schreiber wrote: > >>Semi-apropos I was reading an essay by Herbert Spencer last night. He >>questioned the British educational system that taught Greek and Latin >>because that's what 'educated' people learned even though they had >>limited utility in later life. > > Latin is useful for several reasons; it helps make sense of english, for > starters, and it certainly helps when subsequently learning > latin-derived (Romance) languages. Nothing can make sense of English :) I'm glad I'm a native speaker. Latin does help a bit with Spanish. French is sui generis. I doubt Latin is taught in high school anymore, even in parochial schools. We used to argue about pronunciation with the kids from Catholic High. Anyway, that was the program for college entrance students -- two years of Latin followed by two of a modern language, German for STEM types, French for liberal arts. The shop/business kids took Spanish. All in all fluency in Spanish would have been more useful in my life.