Saxon speech is gut speech. Vulgar Latin is the language of erudition.
I once wrote a script to colour words by the point at which their roots entered the language (the older the root, the deeper red the word was painted).
From memory, Emmylou Harris’s Deeper Well has maybe two words that weren’t in English in some form by the 11th Century, and a large majority were in before the 9th Century. I think “addiction” and “terrible” might be the two latecomers. Even words like “nipple” have a much older root (“neb” in this case).
It occurred to me today that I could ask an LLM to do the same job:
I’m going to give you a short text. I’d like you to put the century in which the word’s root entered English in brackets after each word.
The sun burned hot, it burned my eyes
Burned so hot I thought I’d died
Thought I’d died and gone to hell
Lookin’ for the water from a deeper well
The [Old English] sun [Old English] burned [Old English] hot, it burned [Old English] my [Old English] eyes [Old English]
Burned [Old English] so [Old English] hot [Old English] I [Old English] thought [Old English] I’d [Old English] died [Old English]
Thought [Old English] I’d [Old English] died [Old English] and [Old English] gone [Old English] to [Old English] hell [Old English]
Lookin’ [15th century] for [Old English] the [Old English] water [Old English] from [Old English] a [Old English] deeper [Old English] well [Old English]
Are you sure about “look”?
Good catch—you’re right to question that. The root of “look” actually entered English in the Old English period.
I really should break out that script and stick it online.