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Gary Moore on Sundry WAIS Topics: Litigation, Catalan, Venezuela (John Eipper, USA, 01/25/19 3:08 am)

Gary Moore writes:

Great to read David Duggan's deftly hilarious tour (Jan 24) of the legal system. But also very troubling. Sky's-the-limit on damage awards for causing "behavior changes"? Lesson: Never, ever look at your GPS (as David's absent-minded motorist defendant did) while you're in rear-ending position. Somebody's behavior might change.

And re Jose Ignacio Soler (same date) and the Catalan language not being formally structured until 1918: the Albanian language, with many Latin remnants on top of something profoundly ancient, didn't get its own written alphabet until 1908. The makeshift before that was the alphabet of Albania's half-millennium occupation: Turkish. Others can perhaps comment on Turkish and Arabic--but another mystery is how Turkish got "merci."

Of course, the urgency of Nacho's accompanying report on Venezuela is on another plane, reminding of WAIS's multi-track symphony: both fife and drum. Three-dimensional chess as riddles whisper and worlds collide.

JE comments:  You are correct, Gary.  Like any good symphony, WAIS both entertains and makes you smarter.  If I have any conversational value at a cocktail party, 80% of it comes from what I've learned on WAIS.  As the Turks would say, mersi to you all.

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