What are the Origins of English Words? Facts and Stats and lots of History

What are the origins of the English language? In this video we look at lots of facts and statistics and try to reach some accurate figures about English words and where they come from. We'll go back in history to look at words from Anglos-Saxon, French (and Anglo-Norman), Latin, Old Norse, Dutch and Greek as well as words of non Indo-European origin.

0:00 The stats
1:13 The controversy
4:50 The problem with the stats
6:29 How Germanic is English?
8:00 How French is English?
9:55 Etymology challenge
15:40 Non Indo-European words
16:01 Real names and words unknown
16:59 Obscure and technical words
17:34 More about words
18:43 Conclusions

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[knightmare]

Let's appreciate the way you argue:
- first the point of your detractors, involuntarily showing their lack of researches
- then the explanation of why certain points are not relevant (the german origin)
- why it is difficult to determine the origin of words and the controversy (PIE origin, composed words)
- and finally why you personnally think their stats are incorrect (too much of obscure words)
and besides that, you stay polite and open-minded.
For all of your hard work and dedication, thank you.
(and yes i tried to stick the maximum amount of french words)

[richardsleep]

This really shows how complex questions like "Where did things come from?" be. Thanks Gideon, brilliant.

[grawl]

"If you try to speak without words of French origin, you'll end up talking about you and your brother going to the ale house, feeding apples to the swine, and you'll never be invited back to the party and you'll have a sad life"
Brilliant :)

[effyleven]

I must say this... the arguments made in this video are among the most valid, and the points made most reasonable, of ANY I have ever heard, on ANY topic. Yours was an object lesson in how to win an argument with facts, instead of fervour.
Thank you. I consider myself more knowledgable, and not just about the origins of English vocabulary.

[mariebambelle]

I love how languages mix during their history.
The g sound from the french becomes w in English :
Garantie-> warranty
Guerre -> war
Galles -> Wales
Garderobe-> wardrobe
Gages -> wages
Gaufres -> wafles
Guêpe-> wasp
Guillaume-> William
All of old french "s" have been replace by a circonflex accent on the previous vowel. But in English, the s remains :
Hôpital -> hospital
Guêpe -> wasp
Château (old french : castel) -> castle
Honnête -> honest
Some English words also came to the french language :
Riding coat-> redingote

Some words have gone both ways:
Fleureter (or "conter fleurette") -> Flirt -> flirter

I love this history of words and languages !

[rosmeartoo]

Fascinating!
Whilst at school (early 1960s) our English teacher ran a small project analysing the UKs daily newspapers. We estimated the %age of surface area devoted to advertisements, the size of the headlines, number of pictures, the nature of the articles.
As part of this, our teacher had obtained an anyalasis of the vocabulary required to fully understand all the articles in each paper.
From memory, the baseline was set by the Sun (only just in circulation), the News of the World and I think the Mirror. These required a vocabulary of just 2000 words. Top of the list (pre Murdoch) was the Times followed closely by The (Manchester) Guardian at 20, 000 words.
According to the Oxford Dictionary (1989 Second Edition), 273, 000 words are listed; 171, 476 are in active use, 47, 156 are out-of-date, and nearly 9, 500 include derivatives. It is therefore clear that most of us can only correctly use and understand a small fraction of the total, acknowledging that we may know many techical/scientific words over and above the 20, 000 found from the 1960s survey but that still leaves quite alot that almost none of us use!

[wasstl]

Whatever the old etymology of words, what matters most is the word as it was loaned from another language, especially from a contact language, because that word, when it was loaned, had a specific morphology, typical of the language it was loaned from. What's more, the language borrowing a word will in turn change the shape of that word to a certain extent, as well as the pronounciation, just to adapt it to its linguistic system. For instance, the old French "flour" gave the English word "flower", just like "tour" gave "tower" and "po(v)eir, or poo(v)ir" gave "power".
Another important thing to consider is the status of the language the words were loaned from. When it comes to French and Old norse, we see that they were "contact languages", implying some sort of bilinguism : that's why they had a real influence on the basic/common vocabulary and also on the grammar. So it comes as no surprise that French, and to a much lesser extent Old Norse, weighed more than any other languages in the making of Middle and then Modern English, and transformed Anglo-Saxon (which is the root language) in something new and original. The originality indeed stems from the role played by French. Norman-French (1066), Medieval "standard" French (until 1350), middle French, modern French and contemporary French successively influenced English, especially its vocabulary. As a contact language during the medieval period, French words and some grammatical structures were adopted (and adapted) in the English linguistic system, in such a way that many english words are new/original english creations, mingling French and OE (Anglo-saxon). For example : words like "believable" (OE verb + French ending), or beautyful (French noun + OE ending), or words with French prefix "en/em" + noun + French ending "ment" (eg. em - prison - ment; em-bank-ment). In turn, it comes as no surprise that a purely english creation like the word "comfortable" (French noun "confort" + French ending "able") passed into French without the French people realising it was actually borrowed from English. Moreover, many OFrench words adopted by English passed back into French, with a new shape, like the word "bougette" that gave English "budget", and then passed into French again as "budget" (same spelling but slightly different pronounciation). However, recognising an English word of (old) French origin is not always an easy task, either because the word has disappeared from Modern French, or because the English equivalent has taken on a new morphology making it difficult to see the connection at first sight. Nevertheless, many words of French origin have kept a similar or identical spelling, for example most English words ending with : -tion (question, definition, attention...), [vowel] +) -son (reason, season, prison...), -ment (movement, encouragement, establishment... tough later, Englsih created original words of its own with this "ment" ending, as also seen with the "able" ending), -ity or -ty (identity, beauty, liberty...), -ower or - our (hour, parlour, flower, tower, power, colour, odour... though many English words ending with 'our" do not fall into that category : eg behaviour, harbour), - age (pilgrimage, image, saussage, cage, page, language, courage, advantage...), -ure (nature, or other words of latin origin passed into English through French), -sion (Invasion, conclusion...). Et caeterae...
Oops : I almost forgot to congratulate Gideon for his smart videos ! ;)

[loredanatagliaferri]

What beats me is how aggressive and impolite were the comments you mentioned. I wonder why people can't disagree in a respectful way.

[rogercarl]

I like this video so much as it is more about epistemology, or theory of knowledge, than about language. Most of the detractors are simply quoting something but do not explain the reason for their conclusions. One thing that goes on with many people is that they have a certain view of the world, no matter how shallow, and incorporate that into their way of thinking is that it becomes hard to let go of it, lest they have to view themselves as some kind of fraud. What may be clear in someone's mind is based upon a assumption and new ways of viewing things, which may or may not be better, are dismissed. Well done. Best video I have seem in a long time.

[janewrin]

There must be many little people running around in your head, desperately opening filing cabinets with different languages in. I love it. I regularly try to understand words from their etymology as it often gives a broader understanding. The first language from which we took a word gets the points, but the renting of words by other languages does make for a leasehold rather than freehold situation. I'm pleased to have found your excellent ramblings. Thank you. Oh and the subtitles are hilarious. 'They are just fairies'.

[helenfawcett]

Love this! What a language we use! Even more complex when dialect is added- I learnt a lot about the influence on Yorkshire dialect when living in and learning to speak Norwegian, so expand that to any other area!

[joyfairclough]

Absolutely this! As someone with a decent English vocabulary who learnt French as an adult, I found that I could read French with ease long before I could speak it. I felt that at least 60-70% of what I was reading was intelligible to me, simply because English has incorporated that many French words. It would have been an interesting experiment to see some of the "pure anglo-saxon" sentences swapped out with words of only French origin, because it would be possible in many instances to carry it off! Everyday English would be terribly hobbled were all the French words to disappear. Many anglophones just don't realise the extent to which this is the case. Also-- I find it silly to argue that much of this vocab has come into English through Latin, therefore the percentage of Latin is inflated. Of course the French acquired these words from the Latin, but the English got them from the French!

[sharayahsunshine]

This really makes a lot of sense especially in terms of geography France is the closest neighbor to GB and naturally lots of history between the two. When I was learning french I remember being struck by the frequency in which English and French cross so this makes a lot of sense.

[mariebambelle]

This is so accurate ! As a French person, it is always funny to see when people differenciate the French etymology from the latin or Greek. I mean, 90% of our language comes from greek or latin or both, sooo... I agree when you say that we must look at from whom it came -> most of the latin/greek words in English came with the invasion of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. So, i believe we can say that they are french words.

[samcan]

So well explained. You managed to explain how complex the origin of words and languages is in a very clear manner. Well done! (It reminds me of the saying "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing". The question is simple, but the answer isn't.) Your comment about how high in the tree we go will influence the results is also applicable to biology. If we go high enough, all life forms come from the same primitive cells. But that's not what we think of when we think of the origin of humans or trees. I really enjoy watching your videos. Cheers.

[gerdwagner]

Simply love you, Gideon! I saw a lot of unpleasant comments heading your way when I watched your last video on this topic. All I can say is: Let them talk! There don´t seem to be many people out there endeavouring to really look INTO things instead of just staring at their surface. Too bad...
BTW: I´m from Germany, so it seems to sort of fit content-wise:)
Always looking forward to your next video! Keep it up! Cheers

[bryanvanloo]

It is refreshing to read a collection of comments that derive from educated scholars and also individuals that strive to understand historical values of language origins. Although there are always detractors and trolls peaking out from their little bridges, this is one of the finer subscriptions of YouTube. Thanks Gideon; your knowledge and expertise often finds its way into my advanced ESL classes for Cambridge in China. The students and I appreciate your contributions.

[FirefoxisredExplorerisblueGoog]

Here's another fun one. "Dance" is from the French "Danse" which is from the Low Franconian/Old Dutch "Deins". Dutch still has this word and "deinzen" means to _make a sudden dodging or backing-off movement out of fear or being startled_ . Dutch also re-loaned the French word back into Dutch as "dans" with the modern French meaning.

I do think it's appropriate for the French to turn a startled movement into an art form ;)

[ancientromewithamy]

This is my new favorite channel. That being said, I've seen such different stats on this, notably the idea that more than half come from Latin, but it's just by way of French, so yes, it's more accurate to say from French rather than directly from Latin.

But it's still great, as a native English speaker, to have all these related words to help you out when learning other languages in any case!

[ericcartier]

as a Frenchman passionate by the ENg language, I have to say that you are absolutely right in your analysis and your detractors are just a bunch of uneducated people with a chip on their shoulder.