<P> While some new words enter English as slang, most do not . Some words are adopted from other languages; some are mixtures of existing words (portmanteau words), and some are new creations made of roots from dead languages: e.g., thanatopsis . </P> <P> A computerized survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed .) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973) that estimated the origin of English words as follows: </P> <Ul> <Li> French: 28.3% </Li> <Li> Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24% </Li> <Li> Germanic languages--inherited from Old English, from Proto - Germanic, or a more recent borrowing from a Germanic language such as Old Norse; does not include Germanic words borrowed from a Romance language, i.e., coming from the Germanic element in French, Latin or other Romance languages: 25% </Li> <Li> Greek: 5.32% </Li> <Li> No etymology given: 4.04% </Li> <Li> Derived from proper names: 3.28% </Li> <Li> All other languages: less than 1% </Li> </Ul> <Li> French: 28.3% </Li>

In its development english borrowed heavily from which language