Liguistics and the evolution of the English language

[jenP_97]

Woohoo!  My degree in linguistics (and a concentration of 
the history of the English language) finally comes in handy!

ps.  I'm re-formatting the text below to fix the nesting 
problems.

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "grey_wolf_c" <greywolf1 at j...> 
wrote:

Gretchen:
About 90% of English words (and most European languages for 
that matter) have roots in the latin language.  That is why 
the Latin derivitive is so important or could be so important.


Eloise:
Are you sure about that? I understood that about 50% of the 
words in common usage derive from Old English, which is a 
Germanic tongue. Of course, if you include scientific, 
technical and medical terms, the results are going to be 
skewed significantly towards Greek and Latin. French, Italian 
and Spanish have much higher Latin quotients thanEnglish, I 
would venture.
 
GreyWolf:
I make no pretence to know of linguistics, anymore than what 
my fly-paper mind has manged to catch over the years, but I'm 
100% sure that Gretchen's affirmation is *false*. There is 
*no* way that the English contains a 90% of Latin words. And 
I know because the Spanish percentage of German words is about 
10%, and it's a Romance language, which means that it's 
considered an evolution of Latin, which English is not. 

I'm nowhere sure of this numbers, but I think that actual
Latin-evolved words in Spanish are some 55-60%. About a 20-25% 
is Arabic, a 10% Germanic and the rest a mix-and-match of 
different Languages (which is currently gaining ground thanks 
to *American* words such as "láser", "rádar", "CD-ROM", etc.). 
Not even throwing especialized language into the fray would 
scale Latin up to 90% (although it would give it a big heave, 
if my parent's medical dictionaries are proof).

And since Spanish has much more Latin than English has, there 
is no way the 90% figure can be sustained. The closest language 
to Latin (appart from Ecclesiastical Latin) is Italian, and I
doubt *they* have a 90% figure, either -although I don't know, 
since I've never seen the figure. I'd say, however, that the 
invasions of Germanics in the post-Western-Roman-Empire and 
later the invasions of Turks and Spanish should've introduced 
new vocabulary into the language.


Now it's my turn:

Grey Wolf and Eloise are right - English is nowhere near 90%
latin-based.  For those of you who'd like a little history 
lesson, read on. :)

The English language was primarily Germanic (Frisian, in fact) 
until the Norman invasion of 1066.  All you Brits and Anglo-
philes will remember this is the magic year that the French 
invaded England.  Well.  Because France now ran the country, 
they basically insisted that everyone speak French.  Makes 
sense, I suppose - if you take over a country, you would expect 
your new subjects to speak your language.  However, they ran 
into a little problem.  The only people who would speak French 
were the upper class, i.e., the people who could write.  The 
working class people were illiterate, and so didn't care one 
way or another what language the king and his court were 
speaking.  They were going to keep on speaking good ol' English,
thankyouverymuch.  However, as time passed, a few words sort of
migrated from French to English.  It's hard to imagine a 
situation where words *wouldn't* be assimilated.

So then we have the plague.

As is pretty obvious, there is a big discrepancy in the 
populations of the "upper" class and the "working" classes.  
The plague didn't discriminate, so there were lots of deaths 
in both classes - but the "upper" class (i.e., French speakers) 
was much harder hit.  All of a sudden, there weren't very many 
people who spoke French anymore... but there was a need to 
rally together.  Solution?  Speak English!

Thus, England became an English-speaking country again.  Okay, 
so I've *greatly* oversimplified, but that's the general idea. 
However, because of the length of time between the Norman 
Invasion and the Black Plague, there was considerable change 
in the language.  A lot of French (and through French, 
Latinate) words came into the language.  But the interesting 
part is this:  When you are learning the basics of the English
language (as a child, or an ESL learner), the first "main" 
words you learn are Germanic.  Man, woman, child, home, wife, 
husband, bread, food, etc., are all related to German.  
However, once you've mastered the basics (for children, this 
is about age 6), you start incorporating more French-based 
language into your vocabulary.  Hospital, carburator (sp?),
intelligence... these are all Latinate.  The percentage of 
French in people's English gradually increases as they advance 
through school... so the percentage of French in the English 
language is actually dependant on your level of education.  
In general, however, it's safe to say that English as it is 
today is about 50% Germanic and 40% French/Latin, with the 
remaining 10% made up of words from Celtic, various Native 
American languages, Arabic, and others.

Boy, that was long-winded, but I suppose that could be 
expected, as I haven't had a chance to use my degree in so 
long. :)

Jen, the sponge-brained... (in more ways than one, these days)