"In 1977, Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most influential 20th century Spanish-language writers, told William F. Buckley his reasons for feeling, age 78, that English was 'far finer' than his native tongue." (from YouTube description; video is only 90 seconds long)
When people have complained to me about English being complicated and having too many synonyms, I've made the point that it's a packrat language. We have words from more than one Germanic tribe (more than just Angles and Saxons, even). We have words from Norse, and from Norman French. We have all the parts from Greek and Latin to name bicycles and telescopes, and to to sort our diseases and medicines out in fine detail.
If we like something from India, or Japan, we keep the name for it, and whatever other words we didn't have to describe it or to display or store it. 🙂
If we have two words for one thing, that's denotation (what it points to) but they will develop subtle connotations (maybe not always subtle)—like the many things to call a dog or a horse to let it range from mangey and homeless to a prize-winning star, without saying "dog" or "horse." 🙂
Dinosaur names! I live where lots of dinosaurs are found, and they sometimes get named before they're fully out of the ground. They're not named "in English," though, but of meaningful bits of Greek (mostly, I think) and Latin, strung together to make fancy scientific names that little kids love.
