--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> --- On Tue, 11/4/08, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...> wrote:
>
> > From: Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...>
> > Subject: [tied] Re: Scandinavia and the Germanic tribes such as
Goths, Vandals, Angli and Saxones.
> > To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> > Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2008, 1:41 PM
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Jarrette"
> > <anjarrette@> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > but it just seems noteworthy that the language with
> > probably the
> > > highest proportion of foreign-origin vocabulary in the
> > world
> >
> >
> > As it seems to me. Albanian or Persian might actually hold
> > that
> > title, I'll try to find out the facts.
> >
> > Andrew
>
> According to what I've read, the all-time champ is Chamorro. It's
listed in this book of the world's languages that most of us probably
read long ago, and whose name escapes me. Supposedly 95% of its
vocabulary is from Spanish but it maintains an Austronesian
morphology. They even tell time in Spanish. If you know Spanish you
get the gist but you don't necessarily know the tense, subject,
object, etc.
> I've read that Albanian still has 10% of its native vocabulary and
that Persian is higher.
>
Ok, English is not the champion of foreign-origin vocabulary. I found
this in Wikipedia:
"English has many loanwords. In 1973, a computerised survey of about
80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd edition) was
published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter
Wolff. Their estimates for the origin of English words were as follows:
* French and Norman, including Old French, Old Norman,
Anglo-French and Anglo-Norman: 28.3%
* Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
* Germanic languages, including Old and Middle English: 25%
* Greek: 5.32%
* No etymology given or unknown: 4.03%
* Derived from proper names: 3.28%
* All other languages contributed less than 1%
However, if the frequency of use of words is considered, words from
Old and Middle English occupy the vast majority."
I'm sure that last sentence owes its truth to such pithy words as
"the", "a, an", "of", and the like.
Note that 25% of our vocabulary comes from "Germanic", which includes
Scandinavian, Middle Dutch, Middle Low German, and the modern Germanic
languages. I'd guess then that probably about 20% of our vocabulary
is inherited. That means that close to 80% of our vocabulary is from
elsewhere. English is no longer Englisc!
Andrew