Show r TAKE MY WORD FOR IT By FRANK COLBY Ben BeH return A GERMANIC LANGUAGE Despite the fact tact that French and Latin make up more then than th n one hall of Df our total word words we who speak English still have Germanic G e r man m a s l I c tongues tongue We find our Saxon Anglo-Saxon words easy and natural to say la spell aol i use Ule Most of our language difficulties come from the Romance ele ele- element element ment We find such words word hard to pronounce hard bard to spell and hard to use And English grammar has been made mada all but incomprehensible be be- be because cause the scholars who invented it sought to pattern it after Latin and adopted Latin terms term for its nomen nomen- whereas English is an in- in language that is as II non non- non Latin in form as any other ot er Ger Ger- Germanic manic tongue Now to get back to the subject of talk double-talk let us demonstrate the dual character of our language by listing some familiar word pairs keeping In mind that the first word wordIs wordIs Is simple blunt matter of fact fact and Saxon Anglo and that the second word is well ls well let us u say a sort tort of Romance embroidery construct Build make make manufacture ture corps body relative kin eat eat- line fine volume book wander mean far Jer stream stream river river river tee see observe smell mell smell odor odor little minute little minute feel feel- touch work-labor work till cultivate thInk Imagine In prosaic usage the words word are Interchangeable But when we wish to express ideas ide that are fanciful complicated intellectual poetic or which draw drew fine line distinctions we turn always always to the more graceful and flexible Romance words words as a a construction engineer an automo automo- automobile automobile bile manufacturer a military corps a theory of ot relativity a volume of ci poetry a meandering river r a leI leI- observation a delicate delic te odor a minute mint m l particle sense of touch a labor union a cultivated person an imaginative novel Except for a an of 01 all ell the foregoing tore going words word are from the theor French or Latin There are no Saxon Anglo words with which to express the exact Ideas From T S C Houston In his last speech Secretary Byrnes said Many others do so 0 Please comment Answer Anwer Both and lenth are dialectal Careful speakers will not omit the g I S sound Indeed it Is Ii good usage to follow g with the sound of k k as u |