One of the odd grammatical things about modern English is the way we use : want.
Eg: I want her to come

Oddly, if one puts this phrase into Ngrams it does not show up before 1804

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=I+want+her+to+come&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1500&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CI%20want%20her%20to%20come%3B%2Cc0

I had hitherto assumed that this usage started in the Middle Ages, but perhaps it was much later

This structure differs from both French and German (Je veux qu'elle aille: Ich will dass sie komme): the French phrase comes up on Google, but not the German one

So the questions are:
When did this structure with "want" come into use?
What did people say instead of it before then ?

Is the real Germanic way : She should/must/has to come ??

No need to cloud the meaning with "pedophile" when foot-lover would do instead.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=watching+on+&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cwatching%20on%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bwatching%20on%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BWatching%20on%3B%2Cc0

"God is watching on from a (safe) distance"

beati pacifici

@HS Given our diverse genetic genes, and the otherness of our upbringing and sundry experiences, and the on-flow on our mindset and thinking, it is hardly likely we shall see eye to eye on this. To look upon this thread as the upshot of a harmless (or perhaps mindless) eccentricity might be your best bet to restore your mind-frith.

Whether or nay it be pointless, is of course a matter of standpoint.

So you did not get the beckon to become an extra for Lord of the Rings? No wish to act the Orc or Gandalf?

oops 'vendor' instead of 'seller'

@HS Why is this thread here?
Well it has lead me to consider the roots of modern English; to become much more aware of the influences on modern English lexis; the 'snob' value of using 'rapidly' instead of 'fast', 'quick', 'speedy', to be more aware of those older-rooted words that still exist in dialects and in the dictionary.

If one wades through all the guff, it is a treatise about lexis and style and what is the effect on "register" in modern English, and how acceptable some of the older, less common words are in modern English. Curiously, in the IELTS (International English Testing System), one gets extra marks for using "less common" lexis correctly and in context; however I doubt they mean archaic words, but rather more academic and latin-rooted words.

Sometimes one comes across new coinages like "go-forward" as a noun instead of "progress"; abd perhaps this mirrors the demise of Latin-learning at school, and a step in some areas toward a more straightforward forthright English style.

At any rate, in my view it is a wonderful exercise to try writing English which avoids latin-rooted words wherever it can be done/ wherever it is feasible/wherever it is viable. Equally using Norman-French-rooted words like 'feasible' wherever do-able makes one more aware of the everyday business register in modern English. If one cannot do this one might be unaware of the on-flow from word-choice in terms of informal/business/academic register. Knowing when to use 'invoice' instead of 'bill', 'purchase' instead of 'buy', 'vendor' instead of 'buyer' is very much a deal of modern English and in reading this thread one cannot sidestep the moot point.

That said, many Latin-rooted words cannot be easily sidestepped in today's English, and that is the end-point of this thread. Stick to words in the dictionary if you wish to be understood. Be wary of out-of-date words unless you are writing a historical novel or something.

But don't mark "hearty greetings" wrong at the end of a letter or email, mark it as "seldom used today" as it was quite okay four hundred years ago. It is no more wrong than Chaucer was in his day. Cherchez le mot just!

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-11-08/features/0611070296_1_dialect-negative-double

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet#Vowel_omission

My understanding is that Arabic is usually written without vowels, rthr lk ths.

'Wer' still survives in 'world':

world (n.)
Old English woruld, worold "human existence, the affairs of life," also "a long period of time," also "the human race, mankind, humanity," a word peculiar to Germanic languages (cognates: Old Saxon werold, Old Frisian warld, Dutch wereld, Old Norse verold, Old High German weralt, German Welt), with a literal sense of "age of man," from Proto-Germanic *wer "man" (Old English wer, still in werewolf; see virile) + *ald "age" (see old).

cf etymonline

Bewildered by English mores (or hating the class system), in the early seventies I took a PanAm flight from Heathrow, never to return to Blighty - apart from a brief sojurn there in the early nineties.
So my instincts about Am vs Brit English are often somewhat dated. It all depends on what context one hears or reads them first.