Composition of the English Language
Turning now from the means of improving the speaker's language equipment let us pass to some remarks upon his use of words. The English language is the largest, the most varied in the universe.
Almost entirely free from difficulties of inflection and conjugation, with a simplified grammar, and a great freedom of construction, it suffers from only two signal drawbacks—its spelling and its pronunciation. While it has preserved to a great degree its original Anglo-Saxon grammar, it has enriched its vocabulary by borrowings from everywhere.
Its words have no distinctive forms, so every foreign word can usually be naturalized by a mere change of sound. No matter what their origin, all belong to one family now; gnu is as much English as knew, japan as pogrom, fête as papoose, batik as radii, ohm as marconigram, macadamized as zoomed. Most of the modern borrowings—as just illustrated—were to serve for new things or ideas.
But there was one time when a great reduplication of the vocabulary occurred. After the French conquered England in 1066, English and Norman-French were spoken side by side. The resultant tongue, composed of both, offered many doubles for the same idea. In some instances the fashionable and aristocratic French word marked a difference of meaning as is clearly indicated by such pairs as beef and ox, veal and calf, mutton and sheep, pork and pig. In many other cases words of French and English origin are separated by differences less distinct. Such are love and affection, worship and adoration.
A speaker must take thought of such groups, and consciously endeavor to use the more appropriate for his purpose.