Oh and I agree with Aengelfolc, can't dismiss the fact that the Welsh speaking peoples where the first on the island. So provisions, and location specific favouritism, should be encouraged so as to aid, maintain and promote Welsh in those areas where it is spoken i.e Wales.

"My point was that we should not impose an exclusively Saxon/Norse/Dane tongue on them all when their heritage is so mixed, any more than we should impose Norman-French or Latin."

Hmm, this is very pleasant and utopian in its conclusion, but the reason we have different individual languages is usually due to a predominance of one type of people communicating in an identical tongue, usually named after their geographic location.

The law of democratics tends to dictate that majority rule, so as well over 75% of people in Great Britain are of an Anglo-Germanic heritage, would it not be safe to assume, indeed assert, that English as it stands has a right to the same percentage of native words in its vocabulary? It is preposterous that the dynamics of English's wordhoard are dictated by (educational snobbery in relation to) a fractional amount of the peoples who wended here 2000 and 900yrs ago respectively. The Netherlands was invaded more often than we on this island have ever been, yet they sensibly maintained a truer, grassroots approach to the main stead of their spoken Germanic tongue.

As a Brit then naturally our roots are Celtic, but the sheer weight of north Germanic inflow is obvious to see in the native population; so many men sporting gingery whiskers and mousy brown hair colour that can only indicate time-honoured, mass inter-marriage between dark haired celts and blond teutonics. The point is, whether one attempts to back up Welsh or not, by the conquest English in it's various dialects had completely countermanded Brythonic speech, something Latin did not do centuries earlier. And in my opinion that can only come from widespread Germanic speech throughout the British isles, and with it hoards of Germanic speakers.

My problem with Norman French language influence is not its dominance asserted by natural demographic distribution of d'oil folk, but its elitist fueled tinkering of the English language. Useful Norman French words, I have no objection to, the Hasting's Overthrowing obviously brought nootly words with it - however many of those had been introduced and exhausted by the 12th century. It's the arrogance subversion of English in things like the Peterborough Chronicles where some cock of a monk decided to scriven out hundreds of English words in favour of their own incompetent English - in effect a bit like me as an English speaker taking Descartes' works and with my piss-poor French erasing all the words I didn't know and popping in English ones where it suited my ignorance.That's not cool, and it is an unfitting wrong.

I pretty much go with he fact that if 'pride' was being used by a mother-tongue befolking of around 95% English speakers against 5% Norman French speakers, then the word is most likely attributable to English, whether a Gallic slant in meaning was overlaid or not.

**So the task is to find some marketable spur to sell our way of thinking.**

Yeasaid, I've been saying this for years - convince the common Joe and you can pretty well aliven anything, just has to be trendy.

Any Latin word which English willingly took in and not thrust upon it as an unneeded inkhorn term should be deemed fine, this will also include Norman French words such as 'war' or ' part' that were accepted into the language as they filled a niche one expects... probably some even after the Overthrowing which were just plain useful - though that is obviously harder to prove.

I have to yeasay Ængelfolc's points,

He's right, speech and language are ever flowing and so there is nothing that has been done to the language that cannot be undone.

Perfect sh1te, no English speaker should be waylaid by snobbish scholars saying that their mother tongue only has worth if viewed through the learning of another... utter midden slops!

And it is untrue that pronunciation and uttering is unaffected by spelling... take 'forehead' for instance. Originally, it was pronounced 'forrid' yet now there is back-formation and many say 'fore-head'. 'Again' was mostly said as 'aggenn', but we see a trend towards ' agayn'... Back-formation in line with spelling is commonplace.

A thousand scholars spouting untruths doesn't make them right, and yes I am stating that I find it more likely that a befolking of 95% English speakers that had the word 'beclysan' are more likely to have influenced 'close' than a minority of flowery gallic vikings... sorry but that's strength by numbers. Vowels are soft and squishy and get warped and weft constantly. Plus the b@llocks suggestion about 200yrs of linguistic studies being unquestionable fact is what keeps progress slow and allows professional misunderstanding to become enshrined nonsense.

Language study is a form of science, and as with all science, as the adage goes ' If you aren't pissing people off, then you aren't doing it properly ' And I yeasay that through and through. We here are the questioners, the frainers, the askands, whatever... we don't like the biased populist drivel in the OED or mainstream English language mythology... and we defo have a right to ponder, rethink and provide our own educated guesses.

@Jayles

''The other thing that might be looked at is the whole academic tradition of writing without using "I" or "you"; and stating one's opinions as if they were fact.''

Bidya tell me you wrote this on purpose, as the irony is comic genius :)

Thorn and Aengelfolc,

Hear hear guys, you're both on fire, brandburning hot! Well done! We all benoot far too many fremd words, even those of us striving hard to akindle words falling into nothingness... and the only way of withstanding the dearth is to keep striving, all the more, till it becomes so unbelievely eath for anyone to choose a homeword as to pick a far-flung, trendy and fickle fremdword.