From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 61376
Date: 2008-11-04
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick McCallister" <gabaroo6958@...>
>> >
>> > 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.
>
============
I'll add French to the list of competitors
as it has only some 100 words left from Gaulish,
and probably even fewer from the substrate of Gaulish.
Arnaud