@jayles: You've found another Frankish word with a little Latin flavor!

Banal > ban (from from Frankish *ban. OHG bannan, pannen & OE bannan is a cognate. ON banna, from P.Gmc. *bannanan) + al (from L. -alis, suffix to make adj.'s and nouns meaning "a kind of" or "like"; first used only with Latin loanwords, but now is fully Anglicized and used with Germanic verbs, too, like bestowal, betrothal.)

"Yes indeed hindsight gives us wisdom,
but with wisdom comes age
and with age comes (ailing)
and in the end death itself
is the end
of wisdom."

@jayles: "Now if we use "ailments' instead of "agues" it just destroys it..."

Well, 'ague' firstly means "fever, shivering (mainly from malaria)" and secondly, "sickness". The word ague is a shortening of the Mid.Fr 'fievre ague' (acute fever)

@jayles:

Me thinks it not so grim. Although....

Well, think about the Anglo-Saxon and Norman invasions, and weigh it against today's immigrant invasion. Self-serving Politics is at the root of each with a bit of cultural relativism, a knowledge poor folk, and a brainwashed folk that are told by the "elites" everywhere that their culture is over bearing and shameful (sometimes evil), and nothing to be proud of.

But, the tide can turn...

From the same BBC website, on German:

"Home speakers can be found in France, The Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Kazakhstan and other republics of former USSR."

I want to highlight the use of "Home speakers" here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/european_languages/languages/german.shtml

I think this info fitting to our banter on what is English and what is not. Worth thinking about anyway:

"The Dansk Sprognævn (Danish Language Council) collects and registers all new Danish words. As with all languages, modern Danish is influenced and enriched by foreign words. One of the Council's tasks is to decide which words are considered Danish, and which are loan words. 'Bar', 'bus', 'film' and 'slum' all fit Danish rules of spelling and pronunciation, and so are now considered Danish words, but 'freelance' and 'playboy' are used, but considered mere loan words."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/european_languages/languages/danish.shtml

@addyatg: maybe I will make a go of it....looking it over....it is already made up of about 60-65% true English (Germanic). Let's see who comes up with what.

"...to showing..." = the showing

;-o

"The thought with this whole thing (for me) is getting words through Latin/French wanton over-borrowing instead of using the English words already in English."

That sentence did NOT turn out right! LOL....do over....

For me, this whole thing is about to showing that most of the Latin words in English were a result of misguided, wanton over-borrowing, and were/are not needed. Also, I would like to highlight the fact that they (academics) turned to Latin (and to a lesser extent, Greek), instead of thoughtfully using and being proud of the rich English word-stock that was already at hand to mark new thoughts and things.

Bottom line: Upholding language, is to uphold a culture.

@jayles: "Every language has borrowings, old and new, the question is how much is okay? and why?"

I think there are many "right" answers to this question. Germanic and Roman folks had been in contact prior to the landing of the brothers Hengest and Horsa in 449 AD. It has been said that many millions of Germanic folks were living within the borders of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. What's more, Teutonic traders were doing business with the Romans in Gaulish towns bordering Germania in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Also, lest we forget, Ænglisc was open to Latin through the few Celtic borrowings.

Indeed, it was the Romans war dealings with Germanic folks that brought the most Latin to Ænglisc. There are five areas where Latin borrowing has been plentiful: commercial (trading/agriculture), military, law/government, religion, and intellectual. And, there are five Latin loan time frames that would need to be looked at: Continental Borrowings (before 449 AD), Latin through Celtic (mainly place names, 449 AD-597 AD), Latin through Christianity (about 450 Latin words through Frankish, 597 AD- 1066 AD), the Normans (about 5-10,000 words , 1066 AD-1260 AD), and the Renaissance/Scientific Discover/ Printing Press Era (1500 AD-1800 AD, about 10,000 Latin and Greek words).

I would take out most of the Latin/French/Greek words from 1066 AD onward and put English words in their stead. Often, one finds that two borrowed words can be traced back to the same Latin root! The reason modern English has about 25% borrowed wordstock from Latin and French is mainly due to these last two time-frames.

"Scholars", writers, translators, asf, wanted to replace much of the Norman-French words borrowed earlier, and thought (wrongly) that English (at that time) was not able to create works like could be done in Latin, Greek, or even Italian. They had an intellectual/linguistic inferiority complex likely brought on by the Norman invasion.

These "academics" wantonly translated lots of words directly from the Latin and Greek in the vain, misguided hope that the tongue could be intellectually lifted--or as "W" would say, English needed to be "smartified". ;-p-- and de-Frenchified. These translations were so ridiculous and numerous that the term "inkhorn terms" was used to described the harebrained practice.

We would likely get rid of 15% of the borrowings and doublets by gutting the borrowings from 1066 AD onward. As for a standard, we should average the borrowing rates of all of the other Germanic tongues, and use that average to guide our borrowing rate. This number would also help to reckon, more or less, how much needless, crazy over-borrowing there was from 1066 AD- 1800 AD. The thought with this whole thing (for me) is getting words through Latin/French wanton over-borrowing instead of using the English words already in English. Also,we have to think about words that have been rightly Anglified. Like when a borrowed Latin noun becomes a verb through the addition of a Germanic suffix.

Again, academia and the church are at the forefront! My 2 Marks...