Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "The Latin words you don't know you're using" video.

@alfresco8442 interstingly, that q is actually a different sound from k... the difference is subtle and English doesn't actually Care (never actually Contrasting the two) but the way the 'k' sound is formed before a 'u' in most English dialects is actually... not a 'k', at least in IPA terms. it's formed further back in the mouth. So, qu isn't quite the same as kw, it's more like, well, qw, to be honest. Again, not actually Relevant in English, but interesting.
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usually, to my understanding, there will be records of what was used prior to/at the point of contact, indicating different terms used, and then later records where the terms used have changed. At least when it comes to the Romans.
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it also facilitates 'autumnal' rather than 'fall like'. Sometimes it's less a latin obsession and more a desire to find a word that'll actually fit the meter etc. in a poem or song or play.
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@idraote also, to my understanding, it didn't refer to any one european language, but something of a hybrid used by medeterainian merchants, sailors, dock workers, and the like to communicate among themselves as a common trade language.
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Yeah, English doesn't really care, given that it's making a new word for English, and will happily mash in prefixes and suffixes from English that have nothing to do with latin or greek to begin with as well if need be. Basically: so long as the parts have the desired meaning and the transition between them isn't awkward, who cares?
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It's kind of amazing how many English words come from portugese... they get mangled in the translation, and in most cases were words that the portugese already borrowed and mangled themselves for things they found in far off places when exploring or traiding, but there's a lot of them. Of course, I'm pretty sure you're talking about the common latin origin of the English and Protuguese words, given the video, but still, interesting bit of trivia.
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@sohopedeco 'easter' being basically 'passover with christian heresy* stapled to it and then a coat of pseudo-pagan paint slapped on top'. *say whatever else you like about Christianity one way or the other, when it was starting out it was technically a heretical sect of judeism.
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it's not Too bad for those who already speak a germanic, or to a lesser extent romance, language (though the Celtic bits will still trip them up, being few in number but also very core to the grammar), and once you get further affield in terms of what the learner's native language is, English isn't particularly any worse than any other langauge equally distant from their own. Well... English spelling/orthography is pretty awful, and being a native speaker doesn't make that any less so, but while it rivals Japanese in that respect (though I'd rate Japanese as a Little worse), there are a number of south asian written langauges that have them both beaten quite thoroughly in orthographical awfulness.
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