Interesting for Word Nerds.

One of the factoids I've collected about the English language is that it's mostly not English. I've been told - OK, it was my college linguistics professor - that English is about 40% Norman French, 40% foreign borrowings, and 20% Anglo-Saxon.

On the other hand, this Ideas Illustrated post suggests that there is an 80/20 rule in effect, and the 20% of the language that is native gets the most use.