In English when you talk about scientific, technical, legal or medical topics, you tend to use a lot more words of Latin, Greek and French origin. However in everyday conversation words of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse origin are much more common. Therefore you could say that English has two distinct registers – a higher register used in academic and other formal settings, and a lower register used elsewhere. New scientific terms are usually coined from Latin and\/or Greek roots. Mixing the registers or using one where the other would normal be used can a source of humour.<\/p>\n
In other languages, such as German, new words tend to be coined from native roots. This gives you words like Wasserstoff<\/em> (water material\/stuff), for hydrogen, Sauerstoff<\/em> (sour\/acidic stuff) for oxygen, and Stickstoff<\/em> (close\/stuffy stuff) for nitrogen.<\/p>\n According to this post<\/a>, such words can sound funny to English speakers because they are made from words similar to lower register English ones which are not normally associated with serious vocabulary like this.<\/p>\n There have been suggestions and proposals that new English be coined from native Old English \/ Anglo-Saxon roots, none of which have really caught on. For example, in a text on atomic theory, Uncleftish Beholding<\/em><\/a> by Poul Anderson, almost all the words are of Anglo-Saxon origin and there are many newly coined words, including beholding<\/em> for theory, waterstuff<\/em> for oxygen, ymirstuff<\/em> for uranium, bulkbits<\/em> for molecules, and worldken<\/em> for physics.<\/p>\n