> My native language, Polish, allows for convenient derivation, but it's not a natural thing to do, and if you try, people will look at you funny.
Cultural differences do crop up. The Romans mostly believed that if you wanted to talk about philosophy, you had to do it in Greek; there is a speech preserved from Cicero in which he complains about this belief and gives several examples of how it's possible to say the same things in Latin by using parallel derivational mechanisms. Construction of new words from roots was common in Greek and unusual in Latin.
Cultural differences do crop up. The Romans mostly believed that if you wanted to talk about philosophy, you had to do it in Greek; there is a speech preserved from Cicero in which he complains about this belief and gives several examples of how it's possible to say the same things in Latin by using parallel derivational mechanisms. Construction of new words from roots was common in Greek and unusual in Latin.