Etymology of the English Word-Stock

The English word-stock consists of several extensive strata, the origin of which corresponds to historical and cultural development of the English society. The British Isles used to be conquered by foreign invaders from time to time which resulted in the mixed character of the vocabulary and this makes most particular feature of the English language. Unlike lexical system, the grammar and phonetic system are very stable (unchangeable) and are not often influenced by other languages. A native word is a word which belongs to the original English stock, i.e. of Anglo-Saxon origin. Borrowed words are words taken over from other languages. The etymological linguistic analysis showed that the borrowed stock of words is larger than the native stock of words. In fact native words comprise only 30% of the total number of words in the English vocabulary. The number 30 characterizes the quantity of native words in the vocabulary, but doesn’t give an idea of their frequency and semantic value.

There are the following basic layers of vocabulary in the English language (English belongs to the West Germanic subbranch of languages).