Well, what do you expect, pretty much everyone tried to invade the
island at one time or another with varying success ;-)
No wonder many natives got sick of it and dispersed into just about
every corner of the world....
More seriously, it's a good thing. It makes English pretty easy to
learn compared to most other languages, and I frequently find that
English enables me to decipher bits and pieces of other languages as
well. The English got the language, The French got the SI units, I
wonder who is going to get the currency (yes I believe there will be a
worldwide common currency eventually).
ST
On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Dylan Smith <dyls@...> wrote:
> I thought "plumber" came from the Latin derivation. Then again, the
> Latin in the French word "plomb" can easily be seen. Of course,
> English is so irregular because it freely pirates words from any
> other language with wild abandon, and no one cares - English seems to
> liberally want to incorporate words from every country remotely
> nearby :-)
>