What language does the English language borrow from the most?

Question

French? German? Spanish? Slavic languages? Languages other than those? I have an idea what most folks will say. Probably Latin. But by using that logic, couldn't you say that English has borrowed alot from Spanish because that is also Latin based?

Answer 1

Latin or Greek certainly are in the top contenders. Many of our medical terms come from Latin, for example. Spanish words are based on Latin, but it doesn't count as borrowing from Latin when we borrow from Spanish; they are different languages, and Spanish descended from Latin, not borrowed. And words like "labia" in English came directly from Latin, not through Spanish.

I don't consider a lot of words that came into English from French or German "borrowed" because English descended from those languages. Borrowing is when the word comes straight across. It's absolutely true that English has lots of words in it that are very similar to French and German words, but those words came in while English was becoming its own language, not after. Medical terminology in Latin, however, is borrowed because it has not always been used in English. Therefore, I don't like the previous answer with the percentages of words because I think that the French and German words largely don't count.

It's a good question. I'll be interested to see more answers.

Answer 2

I believe I heard that English actually is something like 90% Latin-descended, but mostly through the other Latin-based languages, not directly from Latin. And German most of all.

Answer 3

About 50% of English words come from Latin.
But the majority of English words with a Latin root come from French.

The most common words in English have a Germanic root but cannot be considered as borrowed words since English is a germanic language. Many words are similar in English, German, and Scandinavian languages not always because they have been borrowed from these languages but because these languages have a common Germanic root.


Scottish, Welsh and Irish are not Germanic languages as I read in one post. They're celtic languages.

Answer 4

English has a fascinating history. It came into being pretty much after the collapse of the Roman Empire when the Germanic and Nordic tribes invaded. French, after 1066, had a profound effect on the language. The Latin influence came mainly through the church and academia. English unabashedly borrows from everyone. It has the largest vocabulary of any language.

Answer 5

I'm joining the last one there. Germanic. And to be precise, the scottish, welsh and irish languages - English has borrowed loads of words from those languages. Then there is also latin, and I'm sure the roman empire is somehow to blame there.

But all things considered, like nearly any other language, it is a indo-european language.

But one thing is for sure, Latin is definately NOT the first language the English language has derived from, and certainly not the most influential language.

Answer 6

Germanic. 98 or 99 of the most common words have a North european root, and about 60% in total. The majority of the rest are Latin via old French, but with words borrowed from maybe another 100 along the way.

Answer 7

The result of a computerized survey of roughly 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3º ed.) was published by Thomas Finkenstaedt & Dieter Wolff (1973). They reckoned the proportions as follows:

- French, including Old French and early Anglo-French: 28.3%
- Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
- Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Dutch: 25%
- Greek: 5.32%
- No etymology given: 4.03%
- Derived from proper names: 3.28%
- All other languages contributed less than 1%
That's clear.

Answer 8

Did you know that the foundations of Latin is Arabic.
Major of the European languages came from Arabic, some fused with Hebrew or Northern Europe Accents.
French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian...are Northern Africa + Arabic.
And English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Russian... are a mix of Arabic with antique Germanic (Slavic)...or what you call vikings languages!
That's all in the books!
*smile*

Answer 9

Latin. You could say Spanish, but Spanish is based on Latin, so you would say Latin instead of Spanish.

Answer 10

English is, at the root, a blend of old Scandinavian languages and the Germanic language of the Saxons with a healthy infusion of Norman French.