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Did you know that the English lanâ€" guage is the youngest in the world? Due to past conquests and population movements it is an amazing mixture of many older languages; and yet, through the past global expanse of the British Empire, it is now spoken by more people than any other. It contains more words than any other and is by far the most interesting. Frank Colby, in his book on Better English, points out that our language has grown from about 70,000 words in 1828 to more than 600,000 words today. Our language contains about 46 diffeâ€" rent sounds, which is more than any other tongue and to express them in 600,000 words we have an alphabet of but 26 letters, which makes it the craziest and most illogical language to learn. But what is English comprised of and where did it come from? \S'hen Modern English evolved it consisted roughly of these elements: French 35%; Angloâ€"Saxon 25%; Latin 16%; Greek 14%; and all the other languages including Gaelic, about 10%. Yet English remains basically a If the park must have a theme, let that theme be nature. Keep the park simple, keep it natural, keep it a people place. English is a crazy, but fascinating subject Much needed, yes, are some cosmetic improvements: expand the system of paths through the area, plant more fAowers, put in benches for visitors, swings and things for kids. Get rid of the zoo. Spruce up the Lion‘s pool and the snack bar. If council wants to be more ambitious, undertake a major landscaping program and build greenhouses with a view to making Waterloo Park a smallâ€"scale botanical gardens. Do we really need the recommended roadway linking the east and west sections of Waterloo Park? A tea room in place of the Waterloo Potter‘s Workshop? An upgraded zoo to attract tourists? Fancy gateways at the park‘s entrance? A Victorian theme? No. Waterloo Park‘s major attraction is its natural, undeveloped, simplicity. It offers acres of green grass and trees in a city sorely lacking both. Now, it‘s a people place, for residents to gather for fun and relaxation. Maybe there‘s a message in this, one which Waterloo‘s councillors should keep in mind June 5 as they consider a $45,000 consultant‘s study calling for major changes to the city‘s major park. How would you improve Waterloo Park? A simple query, one that the Chronicle posed as last week‘s You Said It question. Three people were asked â€" three gave the same response. Leave it alone. Change, but only for the better PAGE 6 â€" WATERLOO CHRONICLE, WEDNESDAY MAY 31, 1989 ()pinion skeleton of our language, and French with a little Latin are the flesh and blood. After the Norman conquest, Angloâ€"Saxon reâ€" mained the language of the common people while French was the language of the gentry, so that all our words expressâ€" ing the commonplace, rudimentary ideas are Angloâ€"Saxon, while those words of supposed refinement, culture and civilizaâ€" Germanic tongue, all its words of the ordinary affairs of life like; man, woman, child, house, farm, field, bread, water, eat, sleep, drink, cook, sow and plough; and all the rude fourâ€"letter words are Angloâ€"Saxâ€" on and had their beginnings in the Low German tribes of Saxony and are Germanâ€" ic. It has been said that Angloâ€"Saxom is the Geoffrey Fellows Perspective Our spelling is without rhyme or reason and the way we pronounce our words makes the learning of our language the despair of foreigners, such as the number of ways we pronounce words ending in ough. And the sounds of th and w are troublesome to foreigners because they are not part of the Latin alphabet, for Words in a living language are like people, they are born, they die, and some are twisted with age. For example, there is a line in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer which says: "Prevent us, 0 Lord, in all our doings." Our present use of the word ‘prevent‘ makes nonsense of this line. But when it was written, the original literal meaning of the Latin derivation of ‘praevenire‘ means precede or come beâ€" fore, as it was then understood. For instance, the names of domestic animals such as ox, pig, and sheep are Germanic; whereas, when cooked it is considered more elegant to refer to them in French, as beef (boeuf), pork (porc), and mutton (mouton). tion are of French_ and Latin origin. Letters welcome (Geoff Fellows operates the Human Resource Development Institute P.O. Box 642, Cambridge, NIR 5W1, providing effectiveness training to business and industry.) Because it is such a crazy mess, English is a fascinating subject to study and I would highly recommend the new book "The Story of English‘ by Robert McCrum, Wim. Cran and Robert MacNeil, which was recently televised. Our language continues to be enriched, for as we expand the boundaries of knowledge we invent new words to deâ€" scribe new concepts and things whereas other languages describe them instead of naming them; so although we have many more words we can be more precise in speaking, and take up far less space in writing. But for all its idiosyncracies it remains the common language of commerce and aviation and it is the lingua franca of polyglot countries such as India. some reason we kept them from the runic alphabet of the Germanic tribes.