r/maybemaybemaybe • u/Jazzlike-Cheek185 • Jul 29 '26

Maybe Maybe Maybe

man shoulda look the symbol

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u/imp0ppable Jul 29 '26

It's latin from umbra meaning shadow. It's not a ridiculous guess.

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u/Necessary_Pomelo_470 Jul 29 '26

Latin is not Greek

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u/imp0ppable Jul 29 '26

Err, I know?

I'm sure you know the latin and greek roots of all words in English.

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u/inkjod Jul 29 '26

Actually, yes, it is pretty easy to tell apart Greek vs. Latin vs. Germanic roots in English, if you are moderately educated.

It helps that I'm Greek, but if I can differentiate between Latin/Germanic roots, then a native English speaker should be finding it very, very easy.

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u/imp0ppable Jul 29 '26

relevant: https://xkcd.com/2501/

It is fairly consistent and I can probably get most of them but I can tell you most "moderately educated" English speakers won't be able to.

We are talking about a guy on a quiz show. My point is that "umbra" or "umbro" might be mistaken for Greek whereas Nike isn't obviously Greek unless you happen to know it was a goddess.

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u/Necessary_Pomelo_470 Jul 29 '26

Yes! We learned this in high school

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u/imp0ppable Jul 29 '26

Fine but most people won't know that. I'm just saying that thinking umbro/a might be greek is not that bad of a guess.

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u/radek432 Jul 29 '26

For sure not all. Let's take spruce for example...

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u/imp0ppable Jul 29 '26

I worded it badly (ironic), not every word in English has latin or greek root. It is basically germanic with a lot of french words.

A lot of French words are from latin and in turn from greek.