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Another special interest of mine. I do prefer British words like "lift" for "elevator" or "holiday" for "vacation." Or "starter" over "appetizer," but the American "fall" over "autumn." Why? All the words I said I preferred are of Germanic origin. There are far too many Latin and Greek words in English. English truly sounds better when it sticks more to its Germanic roots. And I do know (or I can at least guess) the etymologies of the overwhelming majority of words.
But for me, it would look something like this:
Germanic words > Latin/Greek words >>>>>>>>>>>>>> non-European words
Luckily, most words are European. It's mostly pretty easy to avoid using non-European words. It's extremely hard to avoid using Latin words when speaking English. I seldom bother to try.
Take a popular word of non-European (Arabic) origin: alcohol. I'd rather call the specific drink by its name (such as whiskey, beer, wine, and so forth). Or I'd rather just call it "booze." Or I'd say I'm drinking, rather than I'm drinking alcohol, since the former can still be used to mean the same thing as the latter.
Let me try. In Finnish.
Hissi (elevator) - Germanic
alkuruoka (starter) - direct translation of antipasto
loma (holiday) - proto-Baltic
syksy (autumn) - proto-Finnic
alkoholi - Arabic
olut (beer) - Norse/Germanic
viini (wine) - Germanic
viina (booze) - Estonian
Of all your examples, only two are Finnic in origin, all others are loans. Shows that even small languages are nowhere "pure".
Hissi (elevator) - Germanic
alkuruoka (starter) - direct translation of antipasto
loma (holiday) - proto-Baltic
syksy (autumn) - proto-Finnic
alkoholi - Arabic
olut (beer) - Norse/Germanic
viini (wine) - Germanic
viina (booze) - Estonian
In Russian:
Лифт (lift) - lift/elevator - English
Закуска (zakuska) - starter/appetizer - native
Праздник (prazdnik) - holiday - Old Church Slavonic
Осень (osen) - autumn - native
Алкоголь (alkogol) - alcohol - Arabic
Пиво (pivo) - beer - native
Вино (vino) - wine - Slavic, but very old loanword (of Proto-Slavic period) from either Latin or some Germanic language
Выпивка (vypivka) - booze - native
Another special interest of mine. I do prefer British words like "lift" for "elevator" or "holiday" for "vacation." Or "starter" over "appetizer," but the American "fall" over "autumn." Why? All the words I said I preferred are of Germanic origin. There are far too many Latin and Greek words in English. English truly sounds better when it sticks more to its Germanic roots. And I do know (or I can at least guess) the etymologies of the overwhelming majority of words.
But for me, it would look something like this:
Germanic words > Latin/Greek words >>>>>>>>>>>>>> non-European words
Luckily, most words are European. It's mostly pretty easy to avoid using non-European words. It's extremely hard to avoid using Latin words when speaking English. I seldom bother to try.
Take a popular word of non-European (Arabic) origin: alcohol. I'd rather call the specific drink by its name (such as whiskey, beer, wine, and so forth). Or I'd rather just call it "booze." Or I'd say I'm drinking, rather than I'm drinking alcohol, since the former can still be used to mean the same thing as the latter.
I'm also very interested in etymology and I prefer German words over loanwords,especially if a German word already exists. But I don't care as much if they are European or not, and I don't like the recent influx of English words into the German language. Non-foreign words are just much more intuiutive and easier to understand but I'm fine with loanwords that were already part of our language before the High German consonant shift in the early middle ages.
I think in general German has much less foreign words than English and I've heard Icelandic has almost no ones. Sometimes the replaced English word is still known like bookstave=letter or bookhouse=library.
But you'd have to like gambling, alcohol, and parties.. so maybe not your type of place
Not mine either, I'd keep going on to the Utah National Parks.
Remember both the drinking and gambling age for Las Vegas is 21, so a lot will be closed off to him.
Spoiler
Hallucinations are bad enough. But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing. But nobody can handle that other trip—the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted
Not mine either, I'd keep going on to the Utah National Parks.
Remember both the drinking and gambling age for Las Vegas is 21, so a lot will be closed off to him.
[SPOILER]Hallucinations are bad enough. But after a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing. But nobody can handle that other trip—the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted[/SPOILER]
Personally I wouldn't visit Las Vegas, maybe if I was rich and had the time, but there would be many other places in the US i'd rather visit..
Location: Northern Ireland and temporarily England
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Think i'll go to Chicago and Las Vegas, i'm just not sure there's much to do in Chicago haha
Probably won't do business class this time.
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