English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background. (David Crystal)

English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background.

David Crystal

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background cleaner english french greek hebrew history language latin meeting renaissance vacuum danes romans

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Friedrich Max Müller ascribes the same French to Voltaire in October 1851: "Review of Franz Bopp, Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German, and Sclavonic Languages, transl. by Edward Backhouse Eastwick" Edinburgh Review v. 94, no. CXCII p. 298. View quote
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In 1974, the English archaeologist Sir Walter Wilkinson discovered another manuscript, this time written in three languages: Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin...On 30 November 2011, I received a copy of the text that he had mentioned at that first meeting. I transcribe it here. View quote
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