Provenance of English vocabulary

by Lucia Engkent
 
     [This is a fast-access FAQ excerpt.]
Syllable Stress & Unstress by Howard Woods, a 1978 Govt. of Canada
publication, has this breakdown:
           In a dictionary       In a daily newspaper
                               (showing frequency of use)
Anglo-Saxon     20.2%                   78.0%
French          28.3%                   15.2%
Latin           28.5%                    3.1%
Old Norse        1.4%                    2.4%
Greek            3.6%                    0.9%
other           18.0%                    0.4%