The Strait Times, which I believe is in Singapore, has an article on
"The Triumphant Rise of English" that credits its success over languages
such as French to its willingness to borrow, willy nilly, from other
languages. On that, it has this to say:
"Unlike the French and the Italians, the English, till recently, had a
rather laissez-faire attitude towards their language. The French have
had their Academie Francaise since 1634, and the Italians their
Accademia della Crusca since 1582. 'The task of both bodies was to
preserve linguistic purity, to prevent the languages' ruin by permitting
inelegant importations, and to guide the public on just how to write and
speak.' No such body has ever existed for English.
Which perhaps explains its prodigious promiscuity. By the time the first
edition of the compendious Oxford English Dictionary appeared in 1928,
the language had at least 414,825 words. The second edition of the OED,
published in 1989, had 615,100 words. In addition, an estimated
half-million technical and scientific words remained uncatalogued. The
Revised OED, being prepared now, may define as many as a million words.
By comparison, German has a lexicon of only 185,000 words, and French
fewer than 100,000."
It has this to say about the role J. R. R. Tolkien had to play in the
creation of the Oxford English Dictionary:
"We also meet J.R.R. Tolkien, who served as assistant editor for a year,
labouring 'mightily over words beginning with W, among them warm, wasp,
water, wick, wallop, waggle and winter' - not to mention 'walrus', which
he filled a good-sized notebook trying to define."
And for what it is worth, many in Singapore speak an interesting
variation of English that they call Singlish.
--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle
http://www.InklingBooks.com/
--
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