English language
English originated in Anglo-Saxo
See also Language and etymology
English word origin
Angles / Anglo-Saxon
- from the Angles, a Germanic peoples who migrated to the British Islands in the 400s-600s AD.
- part of the Anglo-Saxon invasions
- English is one of the "Anglo-Frisian" languages
Language origins of Modern English
Germanic | Old French | Latin | Greek | Other | Proper Names |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
26% | 29% | 29% | 6% | 6% | 4% |
The most common words in English
- the
- be
- to
- and
- a
- in
- that
- have
- I
- it
notes & statistics
- of the top 20 most common words, 7 are prepositions
- the top 200 words constitute 50-60% of words used commonly used
English synonymous & part of speech word use
- the English language has a huge number of words that have multiple definitions
- other languages may be more explicit with distinct words that English will cover with a single word.
- for example:
English words & parts of speech distribution
- English contains about 600,000 words
- as counted by the Oxford English Dictionary, there are 171,476 words in current use and 47,156 obsolete words
- the Dictionary also counts 250,000 "distinct" words, excluding inflections (word ending changes)
- when word definitions are counted, English has 1,402,895 words
- i.e., the word "love" generally has five definitions in the dictionary
- when counting "headwords" and "lemmas" (words produced from a headword), English has 578,707 words
- "headword" = a word from which other words are derived, such as "break > broken > broke
- see
- as counted by the Oxford English Dictionary, there are 171,476 words in current use and 47,156 obsolete words
Parts of Speech frequency as percent of all words
parts of speech as percentage of all words
- in general, English consists of
- Adjectives: 25%
- Nouns: 50%
- Verbs: 7%
parts of speech as percentage of word usage, conversational v. formal/academic:
Adjectives | Adverbs | Conjunctions | Determiners | Nouns | Prepositions | Pronouns | Verbs | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Conversational | 2.5% | 5% | 4.5% | 4.5% | 15% | 5.5% | 16.5% | 12.5% |
Formal/ Academic | 10% | 3% | 5% | 10% | 30% | 15% | 4% | 10% |
Adjectives | Adverbs | Nouns | Verbs | |||||
- source: The 9 Parts of Speech in English | Ginseng English (from Biber, et. al., (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English.)