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Originally Posted by infamous
Did you know?
An estimated 80% of the English language has been borrowed from other languages. A great deal of which has come from European sources but also much from Asia as well...........................Infy
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It all depends on how you define
"borrowed". Early English comprises elements from Latin dialects, from Anglo-Saxon, from Normandy French and probably also from Viking languagages and from Gaul languages (from pre-Roman times). I would not say it "borrowed" from any of these languages, they are the essential material.
I would say that the borrowing starts after this : if a new word is needed for something new, and you can not compose it out of elements in the cuurently existing language, you borrow from another one. In this way, some words can be borrowed from Latin (e.g. in science), while others have a Latin source as well, but were part of the dialects that grew, or amalgamated into early English.
e.g.
"street" is rooted in the Latin "strata" (meaning layer), but I would not say it is borrowed from Latin ! But a word like
"radiology" - even if it did not exist itself in Latin - is more borrwed from Latin (or composed from elements borrowed from Latin).
