The saprophytic spirits of Borges and Buckley
In Buckley: The Right Word, which is devoted to the uses and abuses of the English language, there is a chapter titled "The Interview". The late, lamented William F. Buckley was a marvellous interviewer and one of the most moving parts of the book is the transcript of an interview he conducted in Buenos Aires in 1997, during the reign of the junta, with the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. At one point, Borges said that he found English "a far finer language" than Spanish and Buckley asked "Why?"
Borges: There are many reasons. Firstly, English is both a Germanic and a Latin language, those two registers. For any idea you take, you have two words. Those words do not mean exactly the same. For example, if I say "regal," it's not exactly the same thing as saying "kingly". Or if I 
say "fraternal," it's not saying the same as "brotherly"; then there is "dark" and "obscure". Those words are different. It would make all the difference — speaking, for example, of the Holy Spirit — it would make all the difference in the world in a poem if I wrote about the Holy Spirit or I wrote "the Holy Ghost," since "ghost" is a fine, dark Saxon word, while "spirit" is a light Latin word. And then there is another reason. And the reason is that I think that of all languages, English is the most physical. You can, for example, say "He loomed over." You can't very well say that in Spanish.
Buckley: Asomo?
Borges: No; they're not exactly the same. And then, in English, you can do almost anything with verbs and prepositions. For example, to "laugh off," to "dream away." Those things can't be said in Spanish. To "live down" something, to "live up to" something. I suppose they can be said in German, although my German really isn't that good. I taught myself German for the sake of reading Schopenhauer in the original text. That was way back in 1916.
And on and on it goes. Spellbinding. Reading the transcript is, to use a typical Buckley word, "saprophytic", which means obtaining nourishment osmotically from dead matter.
