One of the consequences of the French influence is that the vocabulary of English is, to a certain extent, divided between those words that are Germanic (mostly West Germanic, with a smaller influence from the North Germanic branch) and those that are "Latinate" (derived directly from Latin, or through Norman French or other Romance languages). The situation is further compounded, as French, particularly Old French and Anglo-French, were also contributors in English of significant numbers of Germanic words, mostly from the Frankish element in French (see List of English Latinates of Germanic origin).

The majority (estimates range from roughly 50% to more than 80%) of the thousand most common English words are Germanic. However, the majority of more advanced words in subjects such as the sciences, philosophy and mathematics come from Latin or Greek, with Arabic also providing many words in astronomy, mathematics, and chemistry.

Numerous sets of statistics have been proposed to demonstrate the proportionate origins of English vocabulary. None, as of yet, is considered definitive by most linguists.

A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed.) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973) that estimated the origin of English words as follows:

Influences in English vocabulary

• Langue d'oïl, including French and Old Norman: 28.3%
• Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
• Germanic languages (including words directly inherited from Old English; does not include Germanic words coming from the Germanic element in French, Latin or other Romance languages): 25%
• Greek: 5.32%
• No etymology given: 4.03%
• Derived from proper names: 3.28%
• All other languages: less than 1%

A survey by Joseph M. Williams in Origins of the English Language of 10,000 words taken from several thousand business letters gave this set of statistics:

• French (langue d'oïl): 41%
• "Native" English: 33%
• Latin: 15%
• Old Norse: 2%
• Dutch: 1%
• Other: 10%

French origins

A large portion of English vocabulary is of French or Langues d'oïl origin, and was transmitted to English via the Anglo-Norman language spoken by the upper classes in England in the centuries following the Norman Conquest. Words of French origin include competition, mountain, art, table, publicity,  police, role, routine, machine, force, and thousands of others, most of which have been anglicised to fit English rules of  phonology, pronunciation and spelling, rather than those of French (with a few exceptions, for example, façade and affaire de cœur.)

Old Norse origins

Many words of Old Norse origin have entered the English language, primarily from the Viking colonisation of eastern and northern England between 800–1000 CE during the Danelaw. These include common words such as anger, awe, bag, big, birth, blunder, both, cake, call, cast, cosy, cross, cut, die, dirt, drag, drown, egg, fellow, flat, flounder, gain, get, gift, give, guess, guest, gust, hug, husband, ill, kid, law, leg, lift, likely, link, loan, loose, low, mistake, odd, race (running), raise, root, rotten, same, scale, scare, score, seat, seem, sister, skill, skin, skirt, skull, sky, stain, steak, sway, take, though, thrive, Thursday, tight, till (until), trust, ugly, want, weak, window, wing, wrong, the pronoun they (and its forms), and even the verbare (the present plural form of to be) through a merger of Old English and Old Norse cognates. More recent Scandinavian imports include angstrom, fjord, geyser, kraken, litmus, nickel, ombudsman, saga, ski, slalom, smorgasbord, and tungsten.

Dutch and Low German origins

Many words describing the navy, types of ships, and other objects or activities on the water are of Dutch origin. Yacht (jacht), skipper (schipper), cruiser (kruiser), 

flag (vlag), freight(vracht), furlough (verlof), breeze (bries), 

hoist (hijsen), iceberg (ijsberg), boom (boom), and maelstrom (maalstroom) are examples. Other words pertain to art and daily life: easel (ezel),etch (etsen), slim (slim), staple (Middle Dutch stapel "market"), slip (Middle Dutch slippen), landscape (landschap), cookie (koekje), 

curl (krul), shock (schokken), aloof (loef), boss(baas), 

brawl (brallen "to boast"), smack (smakken "to hurl down"), coleslaw (koolsla), dope (doop "dipping sauce"), slender (Old Dutch slinder), slight (Middle Dutch slicht), gas (gas). Dutch has also contributed to English slang, e.g. spook, and the now obsolete snyder (tailor) and stiver (small coin).

Words from Low German include trade (Middle Low German trade), smuggle (smuggeln), and dollar (daler/thaler).