Editing English language (section)

=== Word origins ===
{{Main|Foreign language influences in English|Lists of English words by country or language of origin}}
{{See also|Linguistic purism in English}}
{{Pie chart
|caption=Source languages of English vocabulary<ref name="Wolff"/><ref>{{cite book |title=Origins of the English Language: A Social and Linguistic History |isbn=978-0-02-934470-5 |last1=Williams |first1=Joseph M. |date=1986 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/originsofenglish0000will}}</ref>
|value1=29
|label1=Latin
|color1=red
|value2=29
|label2=[[Old French|(Old) French]], including Anglo-French
|color2=blue
|value3=26
|label3=Germanic languages (Old/Middle English, Old Norse, Dutch)
|color3=green
|value4=6
|label4=Greek
|color4=orange
|value5=6
|label5=Other languages/unknown
|color5=purple
|value6=4
|label6=Derived from proper names
|color6=yellow
}}
English, besides forming new words from existing words and their roots, also borrows words from other languages. This adoption of words from other languages is commonplace in many world languages, but English has been especially open to borrowing of foreign words throughout the last 1,000 years.{{sfn|Denning|Kessler|Leben|2007|p=7}} The most commonly used words in English are West Germanic.{{sfn|Nation|2001|p=265}} The words in English learned first by children as they learn to speak, particularly the grammatical words that dominate the word count of both spoken and written texts, are mainly the Germanic words inherited from the earliest periods of the development of Old English.{{sfn|Algeo|1999}}

But one of the consequences of long language contact between French and English in all stages of their development is that the vocabulary of English has a very high percentage of "Latinate" words (derived from French, especially, and also from other Romance languages and Latin). French words from various periods of the development of French now make up one-third of the vocabulary of English.{{sfn|Gottlieb|2006|p=196}} Linguist Anthony Lacoudre estimated that over 40,000 English words are of French origin and may be understood without [[orthographical]] change by French speakers.<ref name="dailymotion">{{cite web|url=https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5vbb1z|title=L&#039;incroyable histoire des mots français dans la langue anglaise|website=Daily Motion|access-date=20 November 2018|language=fr|archive-date=22 November 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181122113122/https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5vbb1z|url-status=live}}</ref> Words of Old Norse origin have entered the English language primarily from the contact between Old Norse and Old English during colonisation of eastern and [[northern England]]. Many of these words are part of English core vocabulary, such as ''egg'' and ''knife''.{{sfn|Denning|Kessler|Leben|2007}}

English has also borrowed many words directly from Latin, the ancestor of the Romance languages, during all stages of its development.{{sfn|Kastovsky|2006}}{{sfn|Algeo|1999}} Many of these words had earlier been borrowed into Latin from Greek. Latin or Greek are still highly productive sources of stems used to form vocabulary of subjects learned in higher education such as the sciences, philosophy, and mathematics.{{sfn|Romaine|1999|p=4}} English continues to gain new loanwords and [[calques]] ("loan translations") from languages all over the world, and words from languages other than the ancestral Anglo-Saxon language make up about 60% of the vocabulary of English.{{sfn|Fasold|Connor-Linton|2014|p=302}}

English has formal and informal [[Register (sociolinguistics)|speech registers]]; informal registers, including child-directed speech, tend to be made up predominantly of words of Anglo-Saxon origin, while the percentage of vocabulary that is of Latinate origin is higher in legal, scientific, and academic texts.{{sfn|Crystal|2003b|pp=124–127}}{{sfn|Algeo|1999|pp=80–81}}