The original quotation for that came from James Nicholl, who posted it on Usenet in 1990: “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”Artemisia wrote:English, supposedly, has the most words of any language in the world. This is probably because we tend to lure other languages into dark alleyways and mug them for their words, but...my maternal-maternal great-grandparents couldn't speak to each other in their native German because he was Prussian and she was Bavarian...And my maternal-paternal great-grandmother had trouble speaking to many Spanish-speakers from Latin American because she learned High Court Castillian Spanish...and my paternal grandparents may have spoken French, but nothing like they speak in Paris...
For all the ribbing people give English...everyone else is pretty bad too.
The more you know…