English has borrowed the largest share of its vocabulary from French and Latin, with each contributing roughly around a quarter to a third of the total lexicon.
Main source language
Linguists who analyze dictionary etymologies consistently find that French (including Old and Anglo-Norman French) and Latin each account for about 28–29% of English words. Taken together, this means that Latinate sources (French plus direct Latin) form the single biggest block of borrowed vocabulary in English, surpassing contributions from Germanic, Greek, and other languages.
Why French is often cited
Many general references and language-learning sources simplify this by saying that English borrows “most” of its words from French, because French alone makes up close to 30% of the lexicon and was historically the dominant prestige source of loanwords after the Norman Conquest. More technical breakdowns, however, usually treat French and Latin separately but still emphasize that Latinate vocabulary as a whole is the primary source of loanwords into English.
