Out of all of the words in the Oxford English Dictionary, however, no less than ninety-nine percent were taken from other languages. The relative few that trace back to Old English itself are also sixty-two percent of the words most used. Therefore authentically English roots, such as and, but, father, love, fight, to, will, should, not, and from, are central to speaking English. Yet the vast majority of our vocabulary originated in foreign languages, including not merely the obvious "Latinate" items like adjacent and expedite, but common, mundane forms not processed by us as "continental" in the slightest.

For example, every single word in that last sentence longer than three letters originated outside of English itself ... In fact, it's pretty easy to "cook up" that kind of sentence. What would be harder is to come up with one made up only of words that come from Old English. In fact, that last sentence was one ...

English lost most of its original vocabulary through three main lexical "earthquakes."

Vikings invaded and settled in the northern half of Brittany starting in 787; they spoke Old Norse (ancestor of today's Scandinavian languages) and scattered about a thousand words into English. They were not merely "cultural" terms but staples like both, same, again, get, give, are, skirt, sky, and skin. If I tell you that on a foggy Thursday, a sly, dirty-necked, scowling outlaw skulked into the bank with a knife, ransacked it, and crawled out the window seeming happy, every word came from those Vikings except a, into, the, with, it, and out.

Then, in 1066, French speakers took over England for roughly the next two hundred years. Actually, these "French" people were Vikings again, having taken over northwestern France and switched to French over the generations; their ancestry was why these French were called the Normans—that is, Norsemen. They introduced no fewer than about seventy-five hundred words ... how "French" do words such as air, coast, debt, face, flower, joy, people, river, sign, blue ... or fry feel to us today?

The "Latinate" layer most perceptible to us as a word class apart came after the withdrawal of the French, with the increasing use of English as a language of learning—hence client, legal, scene, intellect, recipe, pulpit, exclude, necessary, tolerance, interest, et alia (including et alia, of course).

The Power of Babel, John McWhorter, pp 95-96.