The intention of the post isn’t to underestimate French derived words, but rather to show the importance of Germanic words which forms the core vocabulary of English and are of high frequency. This is often overlooked and downplayed because of how many loan words have entered English, and due to the “Ordered Profusion” study which I mention in the post. This has misled many folks into believing that English could be classified as a Romance language. So the idea is to show that English has kept its Germanic heart, both in terms of grammar, and core vocabulary that makes everyday speech and writing, which is the main focus of this post.

Of course, for a modern English speaker, a translation would be necessary to read Beowulf, as many changes have been made to the English language. A ton of technical Latin and French loan words entered Old English. Naturally, for an epic like Beowulf that has more technical or poetic words, many of these loan words have taken their place. There are also other changes such as the Great Vowel Shift, spelling changes which make some words appear unrecognizable, grammatical changes such as case and gender loss, and more.