spongetaro
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Various studies have been done to estimate the proportion of words of French origin in the English vocabulary. Although the figures differ according to the study, it is always estimated that the proportion of words of French origins is bigger than the proportion of words of "Old English" origin and it is estimated that English speakers who have never studied French already know 15000 French words.
The introduction of thousnads of French words in the English language is the consequence of a "French speaking Elite" rule over England during the Norman and Angevin era. In fact it means that paradoxically, the cultural influence of the Norman and Angevin over England was bigger than the Frankish one over France.
The coat of arms of the UK is still French today.
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)[87] that estimated the origin of English words as follows:
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:[88]
- Langue d'oïl, including French and Old Norman: 28.3%
- Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
- Germanic languages (including words directly inherited from Old English; does not include Germanic words coming from the Germanic element in French, Latin or other Romance languages): 25%
- Greek: 5.32%
- No etymology given: 4.03%
- Derived from proper names: 3.28%
- All other languages: less than 1%
- French (langue d'oïl): 41%
- "Native" English: 33%
- Latin: 15%
- Old Norse: 2%
- Dutch: 1%
- Other: 10%