• The English language's words are separated into three categories:
- Native Words: Words that have always been around in the language, or are derived from native English words. This is the smallest category of words, making up fewer than 20% of words.
- Germanic: Words from Proto-Germanic, a hypothesized ancient ancestor of the Indo-European family of names.
- Indo-European: The largest and oldest group of English words that come from multiple Indo-European daughter languages, traced back to the Proto-Indo-Eruopean language.
• Any words that are not native (Around 80-85%) are considered Borrowed. Along with Germanic and Indo-European, words from Scandinavian influence, the rise of Christianity, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes all provide some vocabulary for our language.
• The Celts and their language Vulgar Latin also provided some influence on English words
• Words born at the rise of Christianity include bishop, priest, and mass.
• Scandinavian/Nordic words include egg, and skill.
- Any word with an 'sk' cluster are Nordic, because Germanic 'sk' became 'sh.'
• The Middle English borrowing period took words for meats from the French and the words for their respective animals from German.
- German Borrows: Cow/Kuh, Swine/Schewein, Sheep/Schaf, Deer/Teir
- French Borrows: Beef/Boeuf, Pork/Porc, Mutton/Mouton, Venison/Venaison
• Shakespeare invented around 1700 words
• Compounding of words took place during the Renaissance, which is the combining of two or more words
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