More French in English than You Think

Simon   Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 09:23 GMT
Homestead did and then they made everyone pay. Try geocities.
Antonio   Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 12:09 GMT
English is over 60% derived from Latin, 13% Celt, 8% English ( native )... well... the Germanic percentage you D.I.Y. subtracting from the lump.
Of course, there are lots of words originated from Hindu, African et al.
I read somewhere that English has about 1 M words today, and the figures I wrote I took from very old books.
Simon   Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 12:17 GMT
I'm sorry but the Celtic element is very minimal. The Celts have their own languages. Why (with little evidence to support their claims) do they keep trying to pinch ours. I would say 1.3% for Celtic would be more like it.
To Wingyellow   Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 12:19 GMT
I believe "pass" is borrowed to the French word "passe"!
wingyellow   Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 13:09 GMT
I would like to say something about Chinese.

Chinese, due to its special written form, does not have many imported words. But it does have some:

1. Ancient Indian imported 1000 years ago because of Buddhism. All were verbally translated without conveying the actual meaning. Nowadays, these words are either used only for Buddhism or used without knowing their origin;

2. English words imported in recently decades;

3. Japanese invented "Chinese words"
Simon   Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 13:16 GMT
A Japanese women once said to me "Why is your language full of so many French words??" As if we were stupid. Of course I replied "Why is your lanuage full of so many Chinese words??" The look she gave me suggested that had she not been my teacher she would have hit me.
Simon   Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 13:20 GMT
I tried to find a picture of her on Google but for some reason any Japanese woman's name you put in Google ends up with a woman with her hand between her legs... Not her surely?
Clark   Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 16:08 GMT
Yeah, the Celtic element in English has never been strong because the Germanic-English were the dominant force over the Celts. And then the Normans were the dominant force over the English, hence the French percentage of words.
Antonio   Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 17:59 GMT
perhap it´s 1,3%, not the 13% I wrote
Jay   Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 19:50 GMT
Nothing FoxNews shows should ever be taken seriously by anyone.
Seriously. They're the total idiot news network.
Liberal bias in the media, my foot. FoxNews = rightwing propaganda.

That said, I'm glad English is such a mix of different languages and influences.
Boy   Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 21:07 GMT
Jay, Sounds like you are 100% right. I've never ever seen a news channel like that. The anchors are full of themselves and the whole channel is based on arrogance.
Rugger   Wednesday, September 24, 2003, 22:45 GMT
I second what Boy just said. I can't believe a Channel like FoxNews even claims to be "fair and balanced".
Boy   Thursday, September 25, 2003, 00:03 GMT
I find this motto very funny "We report, you decide", I mean, aren't they sure what they are reporting?
wassabi   Thursday, September 25, 2003, 03:05 GMT
is this an american news station?
A.S.C.M.   Thursday, September 25, 2003, 03:29 GMT
To Simon (indirectly to Clark):

Geocities contains too much advertising- a vertical banner plus two pop-ups. Try Netfirms Free Basic Hosting at http://www.netfirms.com/hostingbasic . According to the website, you only have a free 30-day trial of their software but the webspace is yours forever for free. If you create your webpages using a different software (i.e. Microsoft Word, HTML with Notepad), you can continue to upload your webpages onto the website by using FTP for no charge after 30 days. Best of all, there's only one banner advert and no popups.

To Boy:

New York stinks. It's a rotten pig pen. As for Paris, people are packed like sardines there. Visit San Francisco and Nice instead.