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From: stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Steve MacGregor)
Subject: List of early English words currently in use in some form
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Date: Sun, 14 May 1995 22:01:29 GMT
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Kyle Gryphon <UJZA56B@prodigy.com> wrote:

kyle>Anyway, less than 2% of our words are leftovers from anglo-saxon, but 
kyle>were you to list the 100 most common words in the English language, 
kyle>they would ALL be of anglo-saxon origin.

According to deb5@midway.uchicago.edu:

deb5>Your guesstimate is totally off.

  Do you have less-off data with which to counter Kyle's comment?

deb5>From _Bright's Old Engish Grammar & Reader_ (3rd. ed.)
>
deb5>"Vocabularly-counts of present day English have shown that, of the 
deb5>1000 words most frequently used, about 83 percent are of OE [Old 
deb5>English] origin.  The proportion decreases rapidly in the less 
deb5>frequent thousands but remains throughout at about 30 percent despite
deb5>the large number of non-English words that have been borrowed down
deb5>through the centuries."

  I won't dispute this; 83% sounds about right.  And 100% sounds about 
right for the 100 most-often-used words.  Or if not, I'd certainly expect 
it to be higher than the 83%.

  Or look at the question this way:
  Consider the hypothetical claim, "Of the \n\ most common words in the 
English language, 100% are of Old-English origin."
  Now then, what is the greatest value of \n\ for which the above 
statement is true?  Show your work.

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