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

[Miles]

>> 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".

Miles:
I never disagreed about English being rich in the way you describe it. And 
you are perfectly right that those nuances can still "floor" (nice one, had 
to look it up ;) ) me after many years of reading English.

But I have to disagree that this distinguishes English from - well, lets 
take German as an example. To ask is "fragen", but there is also 
"*be*fragen" (to consult, or to query, interview...), "*hinter*fragen" (to 
challenge sth), "konsultieren" (to inquire), "verhren" (to interrogate) and 
many more. Many languages have different sources for their lexicon, and 
words that are seemingly synonyms are not if you consider the nuances of 
usage.

Geoff
> 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.

Miles:
That's exactly what I wanted to say. I'm quite often clueless about what 
word to use, even after consulting my dictionary. I know that I do want to 
express something between the lines, as I would do by choosing my words in 
German prudently (wrong word? adverb?), but I can only guess using my 
"instinct", which is a poor advisor without ever being in any English 
speaking country. Sigh. But really, I think that would be similar with 
French, Russian, or Finnish.

Carol:
>Carol, who would really like to hear some new voices in this thread,
>assuming that it hasn't been passed over with horror and revulsion by
>the vast majority of posters!

Miles
I cannot add to your really interesting discussion, but be assured I read it 
;). Maybe one thing: I studied English at school for nine years, but I can't 
remember being taught about cases in English, neither the "historical" ones, 
nor the "modern" ones. I'm sure we talked about it, but I can't recall 
anything about it. And before reading your discussion here I didn't think 
about English cases at all, because they are not really important if you 
don't analyse, but simply understand and speak/write the language. That 
might support Carol's position.

Miles, who still doesn't know about "it's me!" or "it's I!", though the 
latter sounds wrong