English Language Reference Desk/Archives/2010

programs that seem to have been on my stuff

i discpovered this site on software controls on craigslist, it seems that who ever put it here, seems to have tagged both my home computer and my cell phone, here i have been wondering and asking att why my cell phone is acting so strange.

First, this is the wrong Desk. This Desk is for questions about the English language. For general knowledge Q's, like this one, use the Wikiversity:Help_desk. Second, what is your Q, exactly ? And in what way is your cell phone acting strangely ? StuRat 12:56, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

the influence of French on the English language

Can you tell me what percentage of English words are derived from French words? I was told that it is 60 to 70%, which seems surprisingly high for a language that is, as Wikipeida says, 'a West Germanic language'.

According to this Wikipedia article, it's between 33% and 67%: List of English words of French origin. You might wonder why there's such a large range. Well, how to attribute words which are ultimately from Latin is tricky, as they may go Latin -> English, Latin -> French -> English, Latin -> Spanish -> English, Latin -> Italian -> English, or even more complex paths like Latin -> Italian -> French -> Spanish -> English. So, which of those words do you say is of French origin ? And should the same word be listed as both of French origin and also others ? If so, the total percentage of "source languages for English" goes way over 100%. StuRat 14:30, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, usually words which come from Norman are included in the "French" statistics. The Jade Knight ^(d'viser) 19:15, 23 March 2010 (UTC)