Etymology is the study of the origin of words and how their meanings have changed throughout history.
While researching the etymology of several words, I saw numerous languages from which those words were derived, and then I suddenly wondered: is etymology more important to English speakers than to the speakers of any other language because of the large number of languages from which English words come?
In my American Anglish post, I mentioned that English — which is a germanic language — is composed of more words from non-germanic languages than the germanic languages that it is related to. Not only do the majority of English words come from foreign languages, but English is generally considered to have words that come from more languages than most other languages, which is likely due to numerous reasons, such as the invasions and conquests of England and England’s colonization across the globe.
Despite the fact that estimating the usage of etymology per language is highly complex, it could be argued that the use of etymology tends to be much more prominent in English than in other languages because of English’s large foreign influence — in fact, it is estimated that 80% of English words are derived from foreign languages.
To provide some justification for the theory that English is related to more languages than at least the majority of languages, and therefore that etymology is more important to English than most other languages, consider this list that shows an estimated percent of English words that came from different languages or versions of English.
Languages by percentage of English words that come from the language (the germanic languages are in bold):
- Latin: 28.24%
- Proto-Germanic: 20.13%
- French: 14.77%
- Old French: 11.66%
- Greek: 5.32%
- Anglo-French: 1.88%
- Old Norse: 1.83%
- Middle English: 1.53%
- Dutch: 1.07%
- All other languages: >1%
The large number of languages that have contributed to English is certainly a major reason why etymology is so important in English, but it also explains why the spelling of English words varies greatly, because each language that contributed words had its own spelling rules.
What do you think about etymology?
Onward American 