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

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, Miles <d2dMiles at ...> wrote:

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. 

Geoff:
I wouldn't agree with that - there is still a very large vocabulary 
derived from German roots. That also underlines the fact that I 
think you missed my point, which was that the reason why we 
have perhaps the most expressive language is because we have a 
huge stock of synonyms and parallel phrases so that we do not 
repeat the same words in a sentence. Take the word "ask". We 
can also use "inquire", "question" (as a verb) "request"   whereas 
in a language such as German you are reduced to something like 
"Darf ich eine Frage fragen?" We can express the present tense in 
three different ways using auxiliary verbs - "I go", "I do go", "I am 
going"-  which in passing has floored many friends I have known 
from mainland Europe. We can have nuances of meaning as in "I 
am happy" as compared with "I am not unhappy". I could 
continue but I won't tonight. It's late over here.

I wouldn't agree that English is easy.... True, you can get a workable 
knowledge of it fairly quickly, but the alternative ways of saying things 
need a lot of practice. It's not necessarily the accent that gives the 
EFL speaker away, it's the misuse of the fine tuning of the language 
if you see what I mean.