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Anubhav comments on HPMOR: What could've been done better? - Less Wrong
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Why do wizards speak English?
Rather, why do wizards speak English that's so similar to Muggle English?
The wizard and muggle societies have been more or less isolated from each other for several centuries now (since 1692 in Rowling's canon, probably longer in Eliezer's). You'd expect a significant amount of linguistic drift to have taken place. I don't think a small trickle of Muggle-borns is enough to counter-act that.
Muggle-borns are that minority which have both parents be muggles, but there's also intermarriage between muggles and wizards/witches, so that there's a significant number of halfblood children.
And in all of UK there's only one village (Hogsmeade) that's solely composed of wizards/witches, in the rest of the country it seems that wizards/witches are surrounded by Muggle neighbours, probably with charms around them so that the Muggles don't notice anything strange, but nonetheless interacting with said Muggles...
Alternate explanation: "It's magic."
I never got the impression that the non-Hogsmeade wizards interacted significantly with their muggle neighbours; they seem far too ignorant of muggle life for that. If anything, wizard settlements (notice how it's generally a number of families that settle in a village, rather than just one?) seem to be akin to ethnic enclaves.
Half-bloods... wonder how much effect they'd have.
IRL, if there is a significant degree of intermarriage between speakers of two different languages, do a large number of children grow up bilingual? That would be a good place to start looking, I guess.
I've never put these two things next to each other before, but that's a bit of a head-scratcher. If I remember correctly, a very large proportion of Hogwarts students are half-bloods. So... do wizards and muggles actually get along, or is there something strange / sinister / squicky going on there?
Hmm, how many half-bloods are there? Do we ever really meet a typical half-blood? (Harry isn't really half-blood, and Harry, Snape and Voldemort all had unusual childhoods...)
Muggle-marriers may be a tiny minority. Their existence does not imply that wizards in general get along with muggles, even if there's nothing squicky going on.
From Wikipedia:
Though yes, 'half-blood' here refers to any wizard that isn't muggleborn or pure-blood. So a great deal of them might just be descendents of muggleborns.