WAR is good anyway, it is not Latin, Greek, or French. English already had the word, which was the same as what the gallicized Vikings brought over. WAR < OE wyrre/werre; the ON.Fr werre (Frankish *werra) < all from PGmc *werso.

The Germanic gave Sp. guerilla, Old French guerrer, ONFr werreier, ONFR. warant(ir)/warantie (< Frankish *warand), O.Fr garantir/garantie (Frankish *warand), among others.

OED says, "Romanic peoples turned to Germanic for a word to avoid L. bellum because its form tended to merge with bello- "beautiful.""

AMEN < O.E. Soðlic (< Today, soothly), Swā hit ys (so/thus it is {true})

despite < notwithstanding, even though, even with, against

effort < deed, work (hangs on meaning)

proper (appropriate) < right, (be)fitting, true, meet (meetness) [< O.E. gemǣte akin to German gemäss (OHG māza), ON mǣtr]

nuances < shades, sheer

mimic < ape, take on, make like, liken oneself to

@jayles:

1) "The people don't want it" < Want what? Do you mean to say that all English-speaking folk thoughtfully wanted to wreck the English wordstock and/or tongue? Folks wanted fremd words to be put in stead of English ones? I don't think it was done by the folks with aforethought (BTW, this is a great word that can stand in for 'intentional', 'deliberate', 'premeditated', among others). The so-called "academics" are another thing.

2) "Many Norman-French and some latinate borrowings have become deeply embedded and there are now no proper stand-ins".

Kindly, name a few. These N.Fr and L words took over from English ones, so why couldn't we switch back to the unseated English words? I give you that there are some Latinates can be thought of as "true English"- kitchen, street, wine, cup, and other early borrowings before the year 450.

3) "there are nuances available in the french/latinate borrowings that are hard to make up, for example "suggestion" (open to discussion) and "proposal" (more take-it-leave-it) - hard to mimic with "forelay" "put forward" or "input"".

That is only owing to our weak English knowledge of how those shades of meaning were made with the wordstock--of which some words are no longer known or said today.

Take L. suggestion. In what way do you mean it? It could be said to mean "hint at," "a forewarning," "put forward," "bring up/forth," and so forth.

Proposal > a bid, a pitch (to propose (in business) > bid on, to pitch)

It might take a little more thought now, but working daily toward the goal of Englishing ones speech will allow one to hone and sharpen those skills. Soon, everyday English words would roll freely and readily off the tongue.

I must gainsay that "...and the like" is doomed; Anglish may be, but Englishing English again, I think, is not.

There is still hope!

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 01, 2012 > aborning "while being born or produced"

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 02, 2012 > wend "to direct one's course : travel, proceed "

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 06, 2012 > gainsay "1 : to declare to be untrue or invalid 2 : contradict, oppose"

"The Germanic group of languages, which is at the center of our interest, because English belongs to it, has several features that characterize it uniquely. If English had lost them, it would have stopped being Germanic, but both its basic vocabulary, and some peculiarities of grammar survived the Norman Conquest." -- Pg. 171, Word Origins And How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone by Anatoly Lieberman

@ þ: You are right -- George Orwell said as much in his "Politics and the English Language."

"Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent." -- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (1946)

Hear, hear!

@jayles: " ...the Japanese guy, looking at me as if we are mad not to say take-out in the first stead....."

We are MAD!!! :-) LOL

@jayles: "At the end of the day, the word root hardly matters. What is noteworthy is whether the message is clearly understood."

Isn't it funny, odd even, that the word-string with more West-Germanic English is better understood and more stalwart?

"English is gaining more speakers every day." Which English do you mean? Any one of the many kinds of over Latinized-Greek-French-Pidgin-Creole-English mixes spoken throughout the World, or the West-Germanic first tongue of England and America?

"The fact that it has a large vocab borrowed from Latin doesn't mean it's not English." Hmmm...how so? It would seem that English speakers have lost the means to speak about a great many things without fremd words. That would seem to show that West-Germanic English is dying, albeit slowly. If we be true wards of English, we'd be making new words in all fields (high technicality notwithstanding), and hold unneeded borrowing way down, to keep the tongue timely and alive.

"All languages borrow words, there's no such thing as a pure language." Yes; whoever says or thinks any tongue is free from outside sway foreswears the truth. That is not what is at play here...at least for me.

There is nothing wrong, as far as I can see, with a folk keeping their tongue with the times, like in Iceland or France.