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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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Date: Sun, 14 May 1995 23:44:26 GMT
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In article <D8L96I.4Do@indirect.com>,
Steve MacGregor <stevemac@bud.indirect.com> wrote:
>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.

>deb5>Your guesstimate is totally off.
>
>  Do you have less-off data with which to counter Kyle's comment?

Is the quote from Bright's below not displaying on your terminal?

>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.  

I'm truly gratified you've chosen not to dispute an actual linguistic
statician based on your gut feeling.

>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.

Why should I?  I was contesting his claim that "less the 2%" of our
modern English vocab is from Anglo-Saxon.  Given a mistake of this
magnitude, i would also be suspicious of his claim that the 100 most
common words in English are all "of Anglo-Saxon origin", especially 
in light of the fact that "they" is not Anglo-Saxon.
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
