Language topic

I wonder if a purebred Englishman can study a foreign language, even Teutonic one, or the structure of his native language prevents him from it.
 
Native speakers, can the term "beast of burden" be used in contemporary English in a literal sense, i.e. referring to a mule or an ox, or is it too archaic?
 
Native speakers, can the term "beast of burden" be used in contemporary English in a literal sense, i.e. referring to a mule or an ox, or is it too archaic?
Neither Collins nor Merriam-Webster lists this phrase as 'archaic'.
 
It's a bit flowery, tends to get associated with biblical stuff, rightly or wrongly. If you're going for a literary style, though, it's okay. It probably wouldn't work in very 'straight' writing like a sociology essay.
 
I'd use it, especially if making a metaphor, "He was worked like a beast of burden". If I was referring to actual horses and such, I might avoid the term.
 
I have an oddly specific question for all Scandinavian speakers. @Dr. Eddies Wingman @SixesAlltheway and anyone else, including @LooseCannon 's girlfriend.

In many European languages, we use similar words for slippers: Pantoffel (German), pantoufle (French), pantofla (Greek), pantofi (Bulgarian), pantofola (Italian), etc. However, it seems that all Nordic languages have dropped the first syllable - toffel (Swedish), tøffel (Danish and Norwegian), tohveli (Finnish). So my question is WHY? It can't be simply because it's shorter, that would be extremely disappointing. WHY?
 
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:( So it's just economy of language. I was hoping for a more intriguing reason why you dropped the pan-. Thanks though!
 
They're called "terlik" here, which means sweater.

Sweater, as in pullover, is "kazak" or "süveter" btw.
 
We use terlik for these:
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