The same article I cited to open another thread claims that most English words trace back to Old English, not to other languages.

Is this true? Do words from English comprise most of the words in OED? Or alternatively, to account for frequency-of-use, do they comprise most of the words in an ordinary passage of written English?

(The article says, "brew is a good old Old English-Middle English word that, I reckon, sprang from its Anglo-Saxon Germanic heritage as do most of the 600,000-plus words in English … the language's principal foundation is the fabulously versatile and somewhat ordinary Anglo-Saxon Germanic words, such as ale, beer, brew, bottle, word, ordinary, argue, might, reckon, the and most of the words used in this column … .")

In another thread we had decided that the Norman dialect of French had a huge influence on English. Zmj said that Anglo-Norman technically remained the official language of courts until sometime in the 18th century.

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ale, beer, brew, bottle, word, ordinary, argue, might, reckon

Poppycock! (Which by the way is a Dutch loan word meaning literally baby poop.) Though I see he hedged it by saying if a word was in Middle English, a period in which the language absorbed a lot of French words from the Norman overlords, it's Enlish, but to call those words Germanic, shows an inattention to historical linguistic details.

While ale, beer, brew, word, might, and reckon are English (i.e., have been in the language since Old English period (roughly 450–1100 CE), bottle (from Old French botele), argue (from Old French arguer), and ordinary (from Old French ordinarie) came into English in the Middle English period (roughly 1100-1500 CE).

Let's continue: the language's principal foundation is the fabulously versatile and somewhat ordinary Anglo-Saxon Germanic words. Of the 13 distinct words in that quotation, at least six (language, principal, foundation, fabuous(ly), versitile, ordinary) are loanwords from Latin, usually via Norman French; five are undoubtedly of Germanic origin, coming from Old English; two (or is it three?) are problematic. Anglo-Saxon is a kind of hybrid, Latinate word made up long after Old English ceased to be spoken, coined to include the names of two of the three Germanic tribes which migrated to (a euphemism for invaded) Britannia. Germanic is also one of these learned words. Only one of the numerous German tribes seemed to have called themselves something like Germani.

This is just another case of sloppy journalism misinforming the reading public.

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This is just another case of sloppy journalism misinforming the reading public.

If I count aright,

7 from Old English: this; is; another; of; sloppy; the; read
5 from Old French: just; case; journalism; inform; public

So in that small sample, Old English has the majority of the words. On the other hand, most of its portion is what I might call "basic structure" words (this; is; of; the) rather than "colorful" words.

But, Shu, in her column she said: "Beer and ale are brewed, and brew is a good old Old English-Middle English word that, I reckon, sprang from its Anglo-Saxon Germanic heritage as do most (my emphasis) of the 600,000-plus words in English..." I'd not consider 7 out of 12 to be "most."

We still don't know what percentage of English words are of Anglo-Saxon origin.

This is incredibly important.

Incredibly...you're right.

I will venture a linguistic guess: 58%

Can't we just crawl the OED? Which number did you decide you wanted, the percentage of Anglo-Saxon words, and the percentage of words used that are Anglo-Saxon? This would require a weighted sum of words from some corpus, although web documents will probably do a decent job.

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Can't we just crawl the OED?

After you, Claude.