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Interestingly from wikipedia :
I particularly like the summary at the end ...
One of the consequences of the French influence is that the vocabulary of English is, to a certain extent, divided between those words which are Germanic (mostly West Germanic, with a smaller influence from the North Germanic branch) and those which are "Latinate" (Latin-derived, either directly from Norman French or other Romance languages).
Numerous sets of statistics have been proposed to demonstrate the origins of English vocabulary. None, as yet, is considered definitive by most linguists.
A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed.) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973)[45] that estimated the origin of English words as follows:
Influences in English vocabulary
* Langue d'oïl, including French and Old Norman: 28.3%
* Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
* Other Germanic languages (including words directly inherited from Old English): 25%
* Greek: 5.32%
* No etymology given: 4.03%
* Derived from proper names: 3.28%
* All other languages contributed less than 1%
A survey by Joseph M. Williams in Origins of the English Language of 10,000 words taken from several thousand business letters gave this set of statistics:[46]
* French (langue d'oïl): 41%
* "Native" English: 33%
* Latin: 15%
* Danish: 2%
* Dutch: 1%
* Other: 10%
However, 83% of the 1,000 most-common, and all of the 100 most-common English words are Germanic.[47]
The "skeleton" of the English language is Germanic, but the "flesh" is Latinate.
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