The usefulness of a language

Torsten wrote:
<But which situation are we talking about here? The average Anglo-
Saxon is not likely to correct his Norman lord and master by pointing
out that he is using a dative for an accusative or a masculine for a
feminine. Nor is he likely to try to browbeat him by using fancy
prestigious Anglo-Saxon words. That won't get him anywhere, at least
not anywhere nice. Better use a Norman French word that you have
picked up somewhere and which you know your boss will understand.>

Some observations:
Norman French is not the source of most of the French loans in English. Its
main contribution was as a legal language and it was not spoken by the Norman
lords themselves for very long. The way Norman words entered and travelled
in English might be seen in the word "cattle." The original word derived
from Latin, still recognizable in the legal term of art, "chattel and chose",
and referred to an interest in property aside from that held in the land. In
law, this is the difference between "personal" and "real" property. Since
the most valuable part of an interest in such property was often livestock,
"chattel" entered common English as a reference to livestock of any kind, but
probably mainly among the propertied classes. It was used mainly in wills
and legislation and could refer to pigs and chickens as well as oxen. And it
was still being used that way in American English in the early 1800's.
However, local American courts in the West began to use "cattle" exclusively
to refer to cows, interpreting the intention of certain "form" contracts
being written at the time and certain holdings began to be described commonly
as "cattle ranches." It appears that the use of cattle exclusively for cows
caught on in the pulp fiction of the time and moved East and spread in usage
in such expressions as "cattle drive", "cattle baron" and "cattle rustlers."
So this Norman word was introduced and re-introduced by lawyers and made
common English by pulp fiction writers.

Norman lords were involved in the big, mega-historical sense, but really they
had nothing to do with the everyday way the word came into common use.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote a piece called "On the Modesty of History." It is
about how the little things had a lot more to do with how things turn out
than big notions, like prestige.

<<Words are borrowed with a slightly different sense and the old word
dies out. And?>>

What superficially looks like a slightly different sense might have reflected
an important difference in people's lives. My point is that borrowed words
and lost words don't often come from anything as abstract and shallow as
"prestige." Look at these words in context and it is often almost impossible
to see how "prestige" had anything to do with their comings and goings.

<<That is a very good example. Now all you need is some quotes from
those physicists, eg. Einstein and Bohr, who have actually tried to
formulate a modern physical theory in such nakedly Germanic languages
as German and Danish, to the effect that such languages are unsuited
for that purpose.>>

How nakedly Germanic is German physics? At least I recognize the Greek and
Latin in "Die Relativitätstheorie von Albert Einstein, deutsch-amerikanischer
Physiker." There is some heavy clothing already going on there.
(Amerikanischer, by the way, had its origins in the name of 15th Century
Italian sailor. Who'd a thunk it? I would have thought it would have meant
something like "shining glory," "the flowing ones" or "the prestigious
children of Amer" or something. )

My favorite is this regard is from the dinosaur science e-list, where a
debate raged over dropping traditional designations. When it was suggested
that the naming committee change "edentulous'' to "toothless'', a Dutch
biologist objected and argued that Latin and Greek terms should be retained
because "Not all of us speak your very difficult language.''

S. Long