Stanmund: twenty years ago I had no idea that "job" was countable and "work" was not; (well not usually in English); but every 'middling' English student has to learn this well. The result is that one cannot arbitrarily substitute work for job everywhere without crossing the boundary into nonstandard English. So if one of my students wrote "work advert" they would earn themselves extra homework to discover the difference between countable and uncountable nouns. FYI the commonest mistakes by non-native european speakers are things like "informations"; "equipments"; "advices"; "furnitures"; while of course many speakers from SE asia omit the plurals everywhere....
Can we not keep the word job as is may be Celtic?
Secondly (Fr) "strewn with the dregs" is a mixed metaphor indeed. "bestrewn with the rubble of... conjures up a picture better I think.
But we do love a trier!

Ængelfolc: sorry I was not clear. The job ad meant 'independently', substituting 'on your own' makes the meaning ambiguous; 'without too much oversight' would be clearer.

Stanmund: I liked "stand-ins"; found "unlikeliness" confusing with "improbability";
and "intermediate" and "proficient" are in this context technical terms used around the world and by publishers for specifically defined levels, whereas "middling" and "skilled" sound as if they address the performance of the student. Technical lablels are hard to change. I have an "LNB" on the roof, what it is, does, or stands for, I neither know nor care, just I need one for each satellite. It is just a label.

On a more serious note: It is perfectly true that there is a snob value in using latinate words. Thus job adverts contain phrases like "able to work autonomously" - and other "buzz" words. So to intermediate students I just explain this as "on your own", which is near enough for that level. However at proficiency level we then ask the question what is the difference? and clearly autonomously is closer to independently, and "on your own" might mean "alone". Now of course one can come up with other substitutes for autonomously, either completely calqued or just madeup or some revival of OE, but they are never going to have exactly the same feeling as the original (Gk), for good or ill. Of course modern English is littered with the debris of borrowings - wan/pale/pallid;
bloke/wight/man/homo/person; etc.; we just need to weed out the unneeded ones.

Ængelfolc: I actually wrote: "SOMETIMES latinate words.....". Years ago the milk truck delivered fresh milk in glass bottles to our street of an evening. Each evening the driver boomed to his milkboy helpers: TWO HOMOS at # eleven!!!
meaning not homosexuals but homogenized pints of course. In pre-Bastard times the driver would have shouted: TWO MIXED-UPS at # eleven!!! , but all DIY then of course.

AnWulf: After long years learning latin and french at school, like so many grammar schoolboys I find it easier to make up the word "irreplicable" than find a real English word. Hardly surprising, is it? If one wastes the teenage years sitting at a desk learning stuff only befitting a catholic priest, that really is all one is good for, n'est ce pas? Of course such an "education" affects one's English. Far better to learn Welsh or Dutch.

AnWulf: Is there r:eally a nuance between despise and hate? Oh quite definitely. I might indeed despise (or look down on) you (as I do all underlings) but I certainly don't hate you! Underlings are neither worthy of hate nor love!!!! ;+)) nothing personal.

AnWulf: sometimes we can use "seek to" instead of try: she sought to escape...
sometimes "ground" for base: the system is grounded on the data server...
but yes often it's a "no-can-do" situation. Most languages have borrowings so does English, just struggle (or try) to avoid the unneeded ones, although sometimes those latinate words have a very specific and irreplicable meaning, nuance, or neutrality.

I was surprised myself to see that Hungarian raids extended as far west as Spain. but
the point was that language is often a fluke of history. The US could easily be Spanish or French speaking now if the Louisiana purchase had not gone through.

Re battle: slaughter is modern form of Schlacht.
Re computer: of course saxons did not have any computers; but they did jot things down on scrolls marketed under the brand name: "eyepad".

addyatg: "On my list, I would put ... and Icelandic" I didn't realise that the recent clouds of volcanic ash which stopped flights all over Europe were in fact a terrorist reprisal attack on the IMF.....

addyatg: "Korean...*the* toughest language": this depends on your own first language. Tonal languages such as Mandarin, Thai, Vietnamese are often very difficult indeed for people from non-tonal languages. Learning Chinese-style hieroglyphics is also time-consuming indeed. The other factor apparently there is not much literature of any interest in Korean (???), compared to say Mandarin, or Arabic.
On a less serious note, if the Hungarians had won the battle of Lechfeld in 955, and settled in western Europe, subsequently invading England in 1066 and imposing their language on the common folk (instead of the laissez-faire approach of the Normans, it is just possible that people in the US today would all be speaking Magyar........