What percentage of English words come from Latin?
The Wikipedia article on the English Language gives information about English language word origins. I’ve excerpted from that page; you can read it in its entirety at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language “Numerous sets of statistics have been proposed to demonstrate the various origins of English vocabulary. None, as yet, are considered definitive by a majority of linguists.” “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) that estimated the origin of English words as follows: Langue d’oïl, including French and Old Norman: 28.3% Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24% ” “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: French (langue d’oïl), 41% “Nativ
