Is modern english more similar to Latin than it is to middle/old english? Is it just my uninformed opinion/knowledge or am I more likely to recognize a word I barely know if it is in Latin than if I see it in Old English or Middle English? Or, is it a matter of pronunciation, as in, words in old/middle english were written more similar to how they were pronounced. I seem to have noticed this as a trend…
Well, English is not a Romance language, so there’s that. If you’re talking about vocabulary, which type of vocabulary are you asking about: daily use, academic, legal, medical, etc.?
Well, as a side note I am familiar with the idea that English is largely Germanic in grammar but heavily influenced in vocabulary by Latin/Romance Languages… in terms of your direct question I suppose I am mainly talking about daily use
Well, let’s see. Latin grammar involved heavy use of cases; Modern English has practically none, except in the personal pronouns, something also true of Middle English. Latin word order is much freer than Modern or Middle English, a result of the abandonment of noun cases. Conjugation of verbs is likewise more similar between Modern and Middle English. Latin lacks articles. Latin has grammatical gender.
That is just off the top of my head. No, I’d say Modern English has much more in common with Middle English than with Latin.
Have a look at some samples and make your own mind up:
Chaucer - Old English
This white top writeth myne olde yeris;
Myn herte is also mowled as myne heris,
This white head reveals my old years;
My heart is as moldy as my hairs
Latin Motto:
non teneas aurum totum quod splendet ut aurum
Do not take as gold everything that shines like gold
My view is that Latin is a lot less obvious than Old English
I could buy that modern English is more similar to Latin than Old English is. Much of the French-language influence comes in after Old English was a running concern.
Nitpick:
That’s Middle English, not Old English (Anglo-Saxon), which looks like this:
lange þrage; he him ðæs lean forgeald.
II Gewat ða neosian, syþðan niht becom,
hean huses, hu hit Hring-Dene
æfter beorþege gebun hæfdon.
Much more Germanic.
You first need to clarify whether you’re asking about grammar or vocabulary. Certainly Modern English grammar is closer to Anglo-Saxon (Old English) and MUCH closer to Middle English than it is to Latin grammar. On the other hand, English vocabulary has a larger infusion of “foreign” (i.e. not Anglo-Saxon) words than most languages do, due to its history. A lot of Latin-derived words arrived via French in the Norman conquest, many having to do with matters of government and the church. Later in the Renaissance there was another infusion of Latin words, deliberately introduced by scholars. The end result is many of the commonest words come from Anglo-Saxon, while words used in more formal and academic contexts come from Latin. It’s estimated that 60% of English words derive from Latin, but that doesn’t mean that any randomly selected piece of text will have that ratio; the commonest words will probably be Anglo-Saxon, and the rest will depend on the context and formality of the writing.
–Mark
That’s not a nitpick, but an important correction. A lot changed in English between Old and Middle English, most notably the Latin/French influence, (Battle of Hastings and all that.) I don’t know how the OP could be quantified exactly, but I suspect a native English speaker of this era would have an easier time figuring out the meaning of an unknown Latinate word vs an Old English word.
I would argue that modern English (and middle English too) is derived from a creole of Anglo-Saxon and middle French. Certainly, it would be really easy to learn the language of Chaucer. Not so the language of, say, Beowulf.
You can, they say, write English in which only words of Old English come up. You can do it, but not without work.
On the other hand, it is impossible to write English using only words of Romance origin.
That said, Anglo-Saxon really doesn’t resemble modern English, not in the way that middle English does.
I don’t think “creole” means what you think it does. 
BTW, the French adstrate in English did NOT arise primarily from the Norman conquest, but rather the use of French as a prestige language in the 13th century, after most Anglo-Norman nobles had already switched to English. (Cite.)
The influence of Norse on Old and Middle English is much greater, in important ways, than the influence of French. But the Norse influence is also not properly described as “creole.”
Ooh, that sounds like a challenge.
Beautiful estates require constant monitoring.
Modern urban planning necessitates long subway systems.
Flamboyant casinos obscure magnificent panoramas.
Hey this is kind of fun.
–Mark
“Long” is Germanic. But you could have used any of a number of other adjectives of Romance origin, e.g. “elaborate”, so your point is taken. It is great fun. Still my point is that your sentences are clearly odd, while mine was not (and longer besides).
To answer another poster, my history (not my strong suit) may be wrong, but I do know exactly what a creole is. It is a language devised by children growing up speaking a pidgin, which is a jargon created when two peoples with no common language are thrown together.
I incorrectly remembered that Latin longus was the origin of English long, but I guess it’s just a cognate. I admit that the sentences sound a little odd in isolation but I think they could plausibly appear in context without raising eyebrows. Given some time and motivation (neither of which I have right now), I’m sure one could compose fairly normal sounding text from Romance words. Heck, if you can write an entire novel without using the letter E, it can’t be that hard.
–Mark
Be careful-- There’s a selection bias there. Words you barely know are all words that don’t get used very much. Most of English’s Anglo-Saxon heritage is in words that are used all the time, and which you hence know very well.
England was Christianized long before the Norman invasion, and much of the Latin-derived words relating to the church were introduced directly from Latin, not from French. And the deliberate infusion of Latin words may have started in the Renaissance, but it did not end during that time-- it continued long afterwards and is still happening to some degree today.
Old English had declensions, just like Latin, so Current English is not like either in that respect.
Middle English stopped using declensions and grammatical gender (for the most part), so Current English is closer to that in that respect.
As for vocabulary, most of the most commonly used words in Current English derive for Old English, but there are many words based Latin – originally. Since they generally came to English via French, the words had already changed from Latin when they entered the language.