From: G&P
Message: 61359
Date: 2008-11-04
> English … a language in which
the overwhelming majority
>of dictionary
entries have foreign etymologies.
Two responses (I hope they are relevant to the wider discussion)
(a) I don’t think a description of a language should be determined by the origin of its vocabulary. English is clearly a language influenced from several major sources. But those influences have affected the basic language only slightly, and more in learned circles than in the ways people really speak (e.g. you have to be taught not to split an infinitive – real English does it naturally; or again, real English says “me and Jim went to town”). Without evidence, I’m guessing vocabulary is the same: in educated circles, or on learned topics, a larger percentage of the vocabulary will be non-Germanic.
(b) Actually, English people are remarkably unaware of foreign origins of words; the words are so thoroughly naturalised. Compare this with German, where you can get books of “foreign words” – the non-Germanic words scream at you in a German text. In English they don’t – they are adopted and absorbed without question, and no longer foreign. I doubt if any English speaker thinks of “pyjamas” or “shampoo” or “information” as foreign words.
So I cannot agree there is an identity crisis in English.
Peter