English is, as far as I can tell, the most Latin of the Germanic languages. I sometimes like to see how close I can build two sentences, one in Portuguese (my native tongue) and one in English. For example:
I redacted a text, removing the froufrou.
Eu redigi um texto, removendo o frufru.
English is the 'most Latin' of the Germanic languages because of the norman conquest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest_of_England). Since then, you could almost say that english has a double vocabulary; one anglo-saxon (germanic) and one norman-french (romanic). This is why english has so many synonyms and allows for very nuanced expressions (as mentioned by the parent post).
I know, I receive Webster's Word of the Day and most of them are Latin words: really easy for anyone who speaks a Romance language. The last five were: incipient; indissoluble, indoctrinate, infantilize, inscrutable. So maybe Webster should have two mailing lists. One for anglo-saxons and one for speakers of Romance languages.
