Native words: When the Germanic tribes called angles, Saxons and Jutes came to England, they soon took permanent control of this land. Their language, historically known as Anglo-Saxon, dominated the place. Now people generally refer to Anglo-Saxon as old English.
Native words are mainly Words of Anglo-Saxon, which are the base of English vocabulary and occupy 80% among the most commonly used 1000 words.
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Borrowed words: Latin, Greek, French, German…
\x09French: Before the Norman Conquest, English had borrowed words from French, such as castle and bacon. In Old and Middle English periods, at least 10,000 French words were borrowed, of which 75% are still used today. These words cover many aspects, like law and government, religion and military, art and food, etc. In Modern English, French original words occupy 30% of English vocabulary.
\x09Latin: Linguistics research shows that there are more than 10,000 Latin words in
\x09Modern English vocabulary. They cover business, politics, legislation, math,
\x09etc. In English, the commonly used Latin prefixes are ab-, af-, and dis-, etc; the commonly used suffixes are –able, -ary, -ism and –tion, etc.
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Neologism: Of the 20th century, the total amount of English vocabulary has increased 25% compared with the amount created in the history of over one thousand years. With the development of technology and internet, the increasing of new words is inevitable. The fields they cover are much wider, for instance, technologyand education, etc.
Example: film, airport, Hollywood,Open University…