JK Rowling pens a Harry Potter prequel / War of Roses/Holmes?Figg/Walpurga

[Miles]

> Carol:
>> Later, (after a reminder that English is a Germanic and not a Romance
>> language and that modern English is an analytical as opposed to an
>> "inflectional" language), Mason defines "case" as "the form in which
>> a noun or pronoun is used, in order to show the relationship in
>> which it stands to some other word in the sentence" and adds:
>
> Geoff:
> To be quite frank, I do not agree with Mason about English. One of the
> things which makes English one of the most expressive languages in
> the world is the fact it is a mongrel.
>
> I agree that a large part of English derives from its Anglo-Saxon
> Germanic roots but the fact remains that French had a dominating
> effect on English linguistic development following the Norman
> Conquest and thus there is a large part of our heritage stemming
> from the Romance side.

Miles:
But that does not change English being a "Germanic" language in structure.
What has changed most is the lexicon of English - most words have French or
Latin origin. If you strip an English text off its words and replace them by
the respective German expressions, you'll have a text that sounds a bit
funny for German speakers, but it will be perfectly comprehensible. As far
as I understand linguistic classification of languages, that structure is
the crucial point.

In the course of centuries English did not only replace big parts of the
Anglo-Saxon or Germanic lexicon (funnily keeping some that German lost -
"window" for example), the grammatic structure was simplified and "lost"
several distinctions either the Germanic roots, as well as French and Latin
had. This might have to do with English not being a "civilised" language for
a long time, but this is just an amateur's guess.

I hope it doesn't sound rude, but besides the political reasons for English
being lingua franca for the northern hemisphere (which seems to be most
important in my opinion), it's popular because it's easy. Don't get me
wrong: To speak good English is challenging. But to learn enough English
to master everyday conversation and to be understood in English speaking
countries is not too difficult, if you don't ask for a good accent ;).