To add colour and interest to my post on the use of English, I felt a short historical account of great speeches should be a sufficient recommendation of how using Anglo-Saxon words helps convey sense and meaning to a series of words and reinforces their impact to a listener or reader.

In June 1940 my country was at war. The miracle at Dunkirk was about to rescue an entire army of over 300,000 men from certain defeat and capture. France was about to fall and did so within a few weeks. In a long debate in Parliament, in London, the Prime Minister (Neville Chamberlain) was told by one of his own members who quoted Oliver Cromwell: “for all the use you have been, in the name of God Go I say,” a broken man, he resigned. He was replaced by one Winston Churchill. Within days, he had rallied the nation with a series of now very famous speeches. If you read them they spit the defiance the nation craved at that time.

Arguably, his most famous is the one which contains the lines: “ We shall fight on the beaches, We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the hills and fields” ...... it ends “we will never surrender”. Why do I tell you this. Well, all its words are entirely of Anglo-Saxon origin, that is, all but one, the word surrender. Surrender is derived from old French, there is no equivalent single Anglo-Saxon word that conveys this meaning - you have to use phrases like give in or pack up and go.

And the moral of all this: stick with those simple words when writing, they form the backbone of English, you lose nothing in using them and gain everything in clarity of meaning (it’s also easier to get the spelling right).

I unreservedly apologise for an off topic commentary but found it irresistible.

David