ABSTRACT
One of the most dramatic changes in the English language has been the expansion of vocabulary. In particular, this has been achieved by importing words from other languages.
The extract below is from the BBC comedy series Yes Prime Minister, whose principal characters are the government minister James Hacker and the civil servant Sir Humphrey. In his diary, Hacker recalls the time when Humphrey told him that he was going to move to another department:
Humphrey had said that ‘the relationship, which I might tentatively venture to aver has not been without a degree of reciprocal utility and even perhaps occasional gratification, is approaching the point of irreversible bifurcation and, to put it briefly, is in the propinquity of its ultimate regrettable termination’.
