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SJ: Let me dig through my texts and such from my time overseas, I still have them. If I can't give you the source for that within a couple of days I'll retract: it was certainly something that was fairly common belief among the English teachers and more advanced learners that I knew. A particular problem was the massive (and rapidly growing ) size of the English vocabulary as language struggled to keep up with technology and creativity in a world where technological and military fields of international communication are dominated by English. It's a problem we have all the time with our foreign clients and suppliers: how to describe something in English. What in their own language might be a two- or three-word concept or description becomes half a sentence all of itself. My Israeli colleagues have particular difficulty with it. We have no single word in English for the concept of Chutzpah, or of being a Mensch. Likewise our Russian friends cannot explain Volje in one word. English uses an enormous vocabulary to describe things in both very precise and very evocative terms, hence why it has replaced Latin as the language of commerce, as it may one day be replaced by Chinese.
Anyhow, sorry for the threadjack. I now return you to your regularly scheduled argument.
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"I personally think that America's interests would be well served if after or at the time these clowns begin their revolting little hate crime the local police come in and cart them off on some trumped up charges or other. It is necessary in my opinion that America makes an example of them to the world."
--Strange Famous, advocating the use of falsified charges in order to shut people up.
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