English - a very foreign language indeed

I've just seen this article in The Guardian newspaper today: Police called in after poster tells residents of flats to speak English

I quote from the article:

"A poster telling residents of a block of flats “we do not tolerate” people speaking languages other than English in the building has been reported to police...

Addressing Winchester Tower residents, it said the “Queens (sic) English is the spoken tongue here” and suggests that people wanting to speak a language other than English should leave the country."

It is so ironic when you think of the fact that English is a mongrel language, a mix of many different languages.

As an article written by, amongst others, David Crystal on the Britannica website points out:

"Words from more than 350 languages have entered English in this way. Like French, Spanish, and Russian, English frequently forms scientific terms from Classical Greek word elements. Although a Germanic language in its sounds and grammar, the bulk of English vocabulary is in fact Romance or Classical in origin."

Before the Anglo-Saxons came along to Britain from the 5th century onwards, the island contained Picts (Celtic-speaking people), Celts such as the Welsh and even the Romans had lived on the island for a few centuries (an island so horrible for the Romans that to be posted there as a soldier was considered a punishment). 

After the Anglo-Saxons - from Germany - invaded, it was the turn of the Vikings and then the Normans (also originally Vikings [Norsemen] who had previously settled in northern France - Normandy). 

Later, the British - mostly English - went off to see what it could pillage from other nations and brought back even more foreign words.

This means that, now, lots of the basic words in English are German in origin. Here are some German words: Hand, Finger, Arm, Sand, Wind. Can you guess what they mean? With a slightly different spelling to the English you have words like Mann, Glas and Hund (hound). And here are some other words you'll understand if you pronounce them: Haus, Laus, Maus, and Stuhl.

Thanks to the Vikings, we got, among many other words, 'sky', 'them', 'their' and my favourite 'window' (from 'vindauga' = wind's eye).

Then came the civilised French and gave us all the more educated words, like 'educated', most of which originated from Latin. Even something as English as the word 'toast' comes from Latin via French. The 'beef' you might have for your Sunday roast lunch? A word from French. As are 'veal', 'pork' and 'mutton'.

Later we got things like 'ketchup'. As the Oxford English Dictionary defines its origins: "late 17th century: apparently from Chinese (Hokkien dialect) kê-chiap ‘brine of pickled fish or shellfish’, perhaps partly via Malay kecap, kicap ‘soy sauce’."

And 'punch' -  a word from Sanskrit (pañc), meaning “five.” The drink was originally made with five ingredients: alcohol, sugar, lemon, water, and tea or spices. The word 'punch' was was first recorded in British documents in 1632.

The 'tomato' you have with your English fry-up? OED: "early 17th century: from French, Spanish, or Portuguese tomate, from Nahuatl tomatl "

So when someone lays down the rules and says that one should not speak any foreign language in the UK, it just makes me laugh and shake my head in incredulity. 

English is the most foreign language of all.