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Democrat Michael Dukakis* is better at POLITICS than economics, better at TACTICS than STRATEGY,
lacks CHARISMA and has an ORTHODOX BUREAUCRATIC PERSONA; he can SYNTHESIZE ETHNIC
blocs, and is a PRAG-MATIST, nor a DEMAGOGUE. What's distinctive is that all the key words derive from
Greek. Those who find Mr.Dukakis's origins EXOTIC may be astonished to find they have been speaking
Greek all their lives.
Some 2,500 years ago, with epic results, rocky Attica and its city-states plunged into fissionable arguments
over HISTORY, ETHICS, PHILOSOPHY, THEOLOGY, PHISICS, CHEMISTRY, GEOGRAPHY,
MATHEMATICS, ASTRONOMY, SOCIOLOGY, and PSYCHOLOGY - every word a Greek compound.
«Cracy» is Greek for rule or government, and «demos» are the people; similar compounds yielded
ARISTOCRACY, PLUTOCRACY and THEOCRACY. ANARCHY is Greek for absence of government,
OLIGARCHY for rule by the few. TYRANY is a Hellenic word, so is DESPOT, as is their NEMESIS the
TYRANNICIDE.
«Polis» pertains to a city-state, and «ic» to a body ofknowledge; hence POLITICS — and by the same
LOGIC (from «logos» or word) TACTICS, PHYSICS, STATISTICS,. «Doxy» is opinion or DOCTRINE;
hence, ORTHODOXY and HETERODOXY. «Ology» is a branch of knowledge; hence, THEOLOGY ,
ASTROLOGY and COSMOLOGY. PRAGMATIC is from «pragmaticos,» meaning versed in state affairs.
And «CHARISMA» stems from the word for gift, which, according to ancient ETHNIC (from the word for
nation) slander, is to be regarded warily when the bearer is Greek. Over to you, Governor Dukakis.
* Michael Dukakis was the Democratic Party Candidate for President of the U.S.A. who ran against
President Bush (the Republican Party Candidate) in the 1988 election. Dukakis is of Greek origin.
Exercise:
A. Using a College Level English-English dictionary, look up the following words and write next to each the
word (and its definition) from which the English word derives. [Word derivations are usually given in brackets
at the end of the list of definitions.] 1. economics 2. tactic 3. strategy 4. orthodox 5. synthesis 5. analysis 7.
ethnic 8. cosmos 9. legal 10. social
B. Which of the words are not Greek in origin? From what language do they derive?
THE MYSTERY OF LANGUAGE
-HOW DID LANGUAGE BEGIN?
by Ann Finkbeiner
Cavemen would come to need what all languages provide ways to distinguish between cause and effect,
present and past, real and unreal, state and process. They'd need a way to show specificity, so that «Let's
5
have lamb for supper» could not be confused with «Let's eat Fluffy.» We can figure what cavemen would
eventually need to say: anthropologists and physiologists who study ancient skulls can even guess when
they came to say it. But there are no fossil clues to how language began. Perhaps something could be
10
deduced from animal communication. Chimpanzees, for example, have been taught to converse in sign
language, and some theorists suggest that human language began as a system of gestures or with calls of
alarm. Others object, as no one can conclusively trace a line from animallike commu nications to the subtle,
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complex language humans use.
THE INNATE ELEMENT
The majority of linguists — though by no means a consensus — believe humans’ ability to learn
language is at least in part innate, that it is somehow woven into our genetic makeup. Noam Chomsky,
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theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposes a specific neurological program that enables
children to learn to use grammatically correct structures instead of nonsensical ones. Children, says
Chomsky, cannot learn language solely on the basis of what they are taught, and in any case they learn it
25 too quickly for that to be true. But
evidence for a genetic program is hard to come by. Children learn
language in an intensely verbal environment, and linguists cannot maroon
1)
babies in a desert laboratory.
Oddly, a few circumstances do resemble marooning. Some children bom deaf will invent a system of signs
30 their parents do not use. And more provocatively, children will use creoles
2)
, a class of languages that arise