Ruby's Greek Thread

[davidjackson]

I would suggest that, logically, if you can't prove it is Greek, you can't prove it isn't Greek.

There's some fallacy here. Suppose you encounter an unknown animal. You are considering the question of whether it is a cat or not. The animal in question has wings while cats are known to be devoid of wings. Hence you can't prove that it's a cat, while, at the same time, you can prove that it is not a cat.

What? If you can prove it's not a cat, case closed, because the two situations are mutually incompatible. I can't prove it's a cat, because it's a bloody bird.

In order to prove it's not Greek, you have to be able to understand it sufficiently to bring together your argument. Therefore, in order to be able to say it's not Greek, you know enough about it to identify it if it were Greek.
Also, Greek doesn't have any living cognate language, so it's unlikely you'd get it confused with a similar one.