Our English vocabulary today is huge compared to what it was back then, and the words that have been added were borrowed from many different languages, as we shall see. So which words in our speech today are actually Anglo-Saxon in origin? Of the 100 most commonly used words in English today, all 100 are Anglo-Saxon. Of the next 100 most used words, 90 of them are Anglo-Saxon. These words are the essential building-block words of our language, such as here, there, the, is, you, that, when, where, way, water, night, game, god, good, a, and. We could not speak without them.
