I eavesdropped on flight attendant talk a year or so ago, and heard something I can’t forget.

I was on the way to Europe, so the attendants were multi-lingual. I had an aisle seat, and the two women were stalled with their cart near me for a few minutes. It was already obvious that they both spoke at least Italian, French and German in addition to our mother tongue.

“Oh, it’s German for me,” said the flight attendant positioned toward the front of the plane. “When it comes to love and romance, that’s the language I use. The vocabulary is so much richer.”

Well you could have knocked me over with a phrasebook! German better than French for love?

I don’t speak German. Maybe I should learn it. Maybe she was right.

Because English obviously has two roots: Latin/Romance and German/Norse. And while it’s true that the Latin-derived words are regularly iambic and satisfying to pronounce, it’s the vocabulary that came to us from the north that has the punch.

Impossible. Destructive. Understandable.

Kiss. Fart. Life. Gloat.

In my mouth, the words from Greek/Latin feel like caramel, look flighty, and taste safe.

The vocabulary that comes to us from Anglo Saxon is pungent, striking and solid.

It’s like the Latin parent forms pebbles that skip on the surface of our linguistic sea, but Anglo Saxon plows the water.