If you break down the English dictionary and look at the origin of every single word, you’ll get something like this:
29% of words come directly from Latin and 29% from French/Norman. That means that at least 58% of the English dictionary is of Latin origin, though it it probably closer to 60% if you include other Romance languages such as Spanish or Italian. Either way, that’s over half.
Meanwhile, only 26% of English vocabulary is Germanic, which includes Old English, Old Norse, German, Dutch, etc.
So if most English vocabulary isn’t even Germanic, why do we continue to call it Germanic?
Because vocabulary isn’t the only factor that dictates what family/branch a language belongs to.
Besides, the “English vocabulary is mostly Latin based” quote is a bit of a misnomer.
Yes. It is true that most of the words in the English dictionary are Latin in origin. However, most of those words go unused in daily speech. A vast majority of the words we regularly use, especially English’s core words, are Germanic.
Pronouns (I, we, you, he, they…), conjunctions (and, but, or, if…), prepositions (in, at, of, with…), determiners (a, the, some…), and so on. Most of these remain Germanic.
In fact, if you take the top 100 words used in English… only 4 are not Germanic:
- #57: just (from Old French “juste”)
- #61: people (from Old French “pueple”)
- #83: use (from Old French “us”)
- #94: because (from Old French “cause”)
I think these graphs represent English vocabulary a whole lot better. Instead of breaking down each word in the dictionary… these graphs broke down different books and articles. Here you can see that words of Old English (Germanic) origin are the majority.
So, yes, 60% of the English dictionary is Latin based… but roughly 70–80% of the words we use on a daily basis are Germanic.
So that was all vocabulary. I said vocabulary isn’t the only factor, so let’s go into that quickly.
English grammar is certainly Germanic.
Compared to Romance languages, English has a strong reliance on auxiliary verbs (am, do, is, were,…) and prepositions. There is also less of a reliance on inflections. English syntax is closer to other Germanic languages. For example, adjectives and adverbs always come before nouns. Another thing is the fact English doesn’t have a future tense like Romance languages to. In order to to indicate a future action, English will use “modals” (such as “I will…”).
The final factor is “genetics”.
English is Germanic because that’s the group of languages it was “born” into. It is a direct descendant of Proto-Germanic, same as every other member of the Germanic language “family”. It doesn’t matter if basic English was mostly just Romance vocabulary, or if the grammar did change… languages do not change branches/families. It will never get rid of its Germanic linguistic ancestry.
Think about it like this…
Your biological mother will always be your biological mother. You came from her womb, you have her DNA. It doesn’t matter if you get adopted, cut off contact with her, get cosmetic surgery, or adopt new values… you will always be her biological child, no matter what.
It is the same with languages.
It is why we continue to call Maltese a Semitic language, despite the heavy romance influences.
Summary:
English isn’t romance because it heavily relies on its Germanic roots. Most of the words used in basic English are Germanic, and the grammar remains heavily Germanic, even if it is simplified compared to others like German and Icelandic. Yes, most dictionary words are Latin/Romance, but that doesn’t change the fact English is Germanic. Even still… a language can’t jump into a different family, because you can’t change its “ancestry”.
