RJT>Charles Angelich wrote in a message to Robert Sayre:

RJT> CA> When trying to teach conversational English to immigrants it does
RJT> CA> often seem that English is encoded within itself and has no
RJT> CA> inherent meaning and must simply be memorized to be
RJT> CA> understood.

RJT>Isaac Asimov once wrote as to how he was real glad to have learned english
RJT>native speaker,  rather than as a second (or subsequent) language.  The
RJT>language is _so_ filled with various idiosyncrasies I can really see his po

Boston Univ. Professor Brown, (History and English) was prone to
point out many years ago the the main relative problem with the
english language was it had so many more roots than the romantic,
etc., due to the many invaders and the inate stubborness of the
indigenous inhabitants of Albions Isles; wherein they would refuse
to use the language of the more recent invaders until they had been
over powered by the next invader. Hence we use a grammatical stucture
based on the Saxons, descriptive adjectives contributed by the Normans,
names of communities and geographic sites used by Scandian and\or Roman.

To that mish-mash we Americans have added influences of African
gullah tongues and slurrings from Black-english. It is amazing
we understand one and other as much as we do some times.

Ciao, Ack

---
 þ SLMR 2.1a þ Engineers have the formula for doing IT til it hertz.