There was a series on ITV in the UK and few months ago called 'The Adventure of English' that was about this very subject. I found it really facinating viewing.
The amount of words in modern english that have been taken from other langauges in quite staggering.
It has benefit's and drawbacks, the most obvious is how we use the same letters and letter groupings for many different pronounciations. This is because they originated from other languages and the spelling and pronounciation have remained.
The advantage though (tho? thow?), is that english has a huge vocabulary (as Cyberus stated earlier), that doesn't just present itself with many synonyms for one word - but each of these word has a slightly different meaning. It makes English a very descriptive language.
I love this subject, if anyone else is interested have a look
here for some really good examples.
Or do a google for 'english' and 'etymology'.
Martyn.
ps Anyone notice the new english verb i used at the end of the post? :-)
