Greek Language Destines Nation for Financial Ruin

The “No Word for X” claim that I mentioned in my last post (and so thoroughly explored by Language Log) showed up less than 24 hours later in an article by Manfred Ertel in Business Week, “Greece on Verge of Bankruptcy”:

In Greek, there is no direct translation for the verb “save” in a monetary sense. And that is precisely the way the Greeks live.

In reading the entrails of the Greek language, I find that their cultural downfall was also foretold in their invention of “hedonism.”

-ar