School, plus recent reading

[justben]

While following up on a topic from an earlier post, I learned that UGA offers a degree program in cognitive science. Drool. radiantbaby and I were making plans to visit their campus on Friday anyway; I just might see if I can dig up somebody from the department for a chat. Yayness

Comments

[puck]

You should thank the Normans for most of those cognates, not the Romans.

[justben]

Silly Puck: where do you think the Normans got them?

Besides, I'm honestly not so sure. Many of the words that I recognized only from their cognates are words that I suspect may actually be from the Latin, which as I understand it was still quite common in the literature of the Normans.

As it happens, I took a random selection from L'Aphrodite Grecque of words that I recognize only as cognates (e.g., l'intervention, l'épithète, la fonction, l'iconographie), and their etymologies are listed as coming straight from Latin or Middle Latin. It's possible that Merriam-Webster may have just failed to mention the Middle English or Old French connection, but this seems less likely since they do list Latin-through-ME or Latin-through-OF etymologies for many other words where applicable. Beef is a perfect example of the latter. So in this case I'm actually sticking with my original Latin claim.

So nyeah ;-)