> The English dictionary is also about 50% larger than the French Dictionary....

> It is very frequent in English to use both the French word and the German word for the same thing in different situation.

It's kind of like in genetics: if a gene gets duplicated, it creates the opportunity for one copy to evolve to do something else. Likewise with language: having two words for the same thing allows their meanings to diverge without loss to cover more shades of meaning.