--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > They've got whole *departments* in France whose > job it is to try to protect the language from > "creeping bastardizations," such as the use of > the English words "weekend." Some could say > that it's a fool's errand, trying to protect > the "purity of the language" this way, but I > admire it. > > The problems of internationalization and English > having become the de facto "lingua franca" of > our age make it really *hard* to keep one's > original language intact and preserve its > beauty.
Actually, one of the reasons English *has* become an international language is because its vocabulary is so rich with words borrowed from other languages. By some estimates, only a third of the words used in English came from the original Anglo-Saxon (although these words are the most frequently used).
