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Old 01-28-2012, 10:10 AM   #2913
Andsigil
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
 
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: The Deepest Forges of Ered Luin
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I love the English language, ever since I began studying Latin, Spanish, and Japanese.

This attempt by the Normans to smash the square peg of French into the round hole of Anglo Saxon which began a thousand years ago has become what multilingual, non-English speakers have assured is the hardest language to learn in the world.

I've collected a few quotes about English over the years:

“The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”
-G. K. Chesterton

“English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin, a language with which it has precious little in common.”
-Bill Bryson

To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.
—George Orwell
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