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My Germanic Linguistics grad school prof told us once, to your point, if you count etymologies of words in spoken English and in the English dictionary, you'd g
by jjtheblunt 4y ago
My Germanic Linguistics grad school prof told us once, to your point, if you count etymologies of words in spoken English and in the English dictionary, you'd get roughly the following:
spoken English uses roughly 80% Germanic vocabulary, but the English dictionary is roughly 80% Latin and Greek words (anglicized).
- WalterBright 4y agoI've heard it put more crassly as "barbarian grammar with french nouns"
- jjtheblunt 4y agoThat's great.
- codebje 4y agoThe only thing that got hacked to pieces more than the English peasantry during the middle ages was the English language.