[gutnor]

A lot of the specific term in English comes from the common French vocabulary and are still very (very) close to the common words in the French spoken today. The common vocabulary in English comes from German origin. Actually I think you can basically speak about anything using only German origin words.

In order to learn French and its vocabulary, English speaker will found a lot of similarity but from the more formal side of their vocabulary. That would lead English speaker to think French is more precise, I don't think the French have something to do with this.

That's BTW a common mistake English speaker make when evaluating some French speaker proficiency. The fact that I use rarely used words does not mean that I have a large vocabulary, it is just the opposite.

[Terr_]

There's also "Anglish", where non-germanic influences are replaced. A funny sample of this is Uncleftish Beholding [0], a fictional textbook entry by sci-fi writer Poul Anderson.

[0] https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.language...

[eli_gottlieb]

>In order to learn French and its vocabulary, English speaker will found a lot of similarity but from the more formal side of their vocabulary. That would lead English speaker to think French is more precise, I don't think the French have something to do with this.

Worse, the French apparently teach young students to write in a way that they consider profound, and the Anglosphere considers imprecise drivel.

[arkades]

Do elaborate?

[eli_gottlieb]

I can't really go into detail much, but my wife too intensive/immersion French in her school days. As she became fluent in basic spoken and casual-written French, they taught her the French style of literary writing. She's the one who told me it's meant to be profound or deep, but comes across to her Anglo brain as vague and, well, bad at saying anything at all.