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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: List of early English words currently in use in some form
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References: <goolsby-2604951045210001@198.68.144.103> <3oss3o$idv@cd4680fs.rrze.uni-erlangen.de> <3p3ts9$2oqq@usenetp1.news.prodigy.com>
Date: Sun, 14 May 1995 15:37:50 GMT
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In article <3p3ts9$2oqq@usenetp1.news.prodigy.com>,
Kyle Gryphon <UJZA56B@prodigy.com> wrote:
>You only need a book on English etymology, I doubt you can find anything 
>simpler than that.
>
>Antway, less than 2% of our words are leftovers from anglo-saxon, but 
>were you to list the 100 most common words in the English language, they 
>would ALL be of anglo-saxon origin.

Your guesstimate is totally off.

From _Bright's Old Engish Grammar & Reader_ (3rd. ed.)

"Vocabularly-counts of present day English have shown that, of the 
1000 words most frequently used, about 83 percent are of OE [Old 
English] origin.  The proportion decreases rapidly in the less 
frequent thousands but remains throughout at about 30 percent despite
the large number of non-English words that have been borrowed down
through the centuries."

The source for this is A.H. Roberts' _A statistical analysis of
American English_ (Hague, 1965).

>All in all, I've heard that there are 300,000 English words in common use.

Your source for this is...
>
>Most are from French.

Nope.  The single largest source of non-Anglo-Saxon vocabulary in
English is Latin in its Classical, Medieval, and Modern forms.
French and Norman French combined rank only second.


-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
