Word origins
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)[1] that estimated the origin of English words as follows:
Influences in English vocabulary
Langue d'oïl, including French and Old Norman: 28.3%
Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
Germanic languages – inherited from Old English, from Proto-Germanic, or a more recent borrowing from a Germanic language such as Old Norse; does not include Germanic words borrowed from a Romance language, i.e., coming from the Germanic element in French, Latin or other Romance languages: 25%
Greek: 5.32%
No etymology given: 4.03%
Derived from proper names: 3.28%
All other languages: less than 1%
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:[2]
French (langue d'oïl): 41%
"Native" English: 33%
Latin: 15%
Old Norse: 5%
Dutch: 1%
Other: 5%[3]
After careful consideration, Brill has taken the initiative of designing a typeface. Named “the Brill”, it presents complete coverage of the Latin script with the full range of diacritics and linguistics (IPA) characters used to display any language from any period correctly, and Greek and Cyrillic are also covered.
Christian Lehmann, Professor für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft an der Universität Erfurt, homepage; "look at Christian Lehmann's models on *how *to write a grammar of a language (any language) and slowly show how syntax, semantics, pragmatics, all have roles to play in the rules of the grammar."