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I agree with cynwoody. The great advantage of English is the way it has quite consciously and shamelessly imported words as needed. It has helped it become the de facto world language.

And yes I can understand the French concern about "cultural imperialism" but in the final analysis usage is the ultimate arbiter. The English Language has never stood still and the day it does will be the day it starts to fossilise. If the French are so worried about the purity of their language being compromised, they need to devise some proper French alternative. Or better yet, get some better novelists and playwrights and cultural types to spread French about a bit more.

Well, I would totally agree that the French language has to be kept lively and interesting through as you say, novelists and playwrights.

There is a difference in causation however. I don’t think anyone would suggest that the English language adoption of the Dutch term ‘ice berg’, was an element of Dutch cultural imperialism. There was no other factor that could point to any kind of cultural imperialism on the part of the Dutch.

Now, there was a recent article on FreeRepublic about a controversy in France over college courses being taught in English instead of French. The purpose of this was to try to attract immigrants who might have learned English, but not French.
I would argue that this was indeed a form of cultural imperialism, not imposed by foreign cultures themselves, but by scholars in France eager to rake in more cash.
If people in the US began regularly substituting the title of Mr. with ‘Señor’, in light of the massive influx of Hispanic immigrants, I could argue that this was a result of cultural imperialism, seeping into American culture through uncontrolled immigration and a lack of assimilation.

This only applied IF the words being substituted already exist. If they do not, then I am mistaken, and I see no issue.

We can’t really deny that some cultural imperialism does exist in Europe, as almost all children at least in Western Europe are encouraged to learn English, as it is a very useful language to know. I guess what I was voicing concern about is the growth of such imperialism to a point where customs, languages, and cultures begin to die out.

This may be one of the strongest arguments I have heard for European ethnopluralism. That by keeping cultures definite and separate, we actually preserve their beauty. I don’t deny that some exchanges of words or phrases helps to keep languages alive, but I wouldn’t want it to get to the point where French was indistinguishable from English.

The French should be much more concerned with Hokkienese from Malaysia and Indonesia. They've given us katchup (cat siap) for example, and a host of words for a myriad of spices and teas.

The base language has 8 full tones yet the overseas Chinese version is 30% of Dutch origin.

Today it's busy absorbing English and should at some point turn into a full creole language able to stand on its own as the first full blending of a major Souvrn' Chinese language and Old West Gothic!

They'll then burp up French as a nasty aftertaste!

The great advantage of English is the way it has quite consciously and shamelessly imported words as needed. It has helped it become the de facto world language.

There are already ~1600 French words in English language, but new French words are rare. Why? Because the French have stopped innovating. If the French had developed the world's leading search engine, the computer, or hash tags, we would be using French words in relation to those.

Of the total words in the English language (a remarkably difficult concept to define, BTW) somewhere around 30% are French in origin, with another 30% Latin.

Of course, French words are themselves Latin in origin, so 60% of our language is of Latin origin.

Another 30% or so is of Germanic origin, mostly Anglo-Saxon, though these tend to be the most commonly used words, so that of the words actually spoken every day the vast majority are Germanic.