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I value the fact that English has two parallel vocabularies ‒ the Germanic vocabulary and the Latinate vocabulary. For example, we have the word 'undersea', and then we have 'submarine'. Or 'underground' and 'subterranean', 'all-powerful' and 'omnipotent'. So we can shift registers. We can say something in a very plain, blunt, Anglo-Saxon way, like "I will not do that" ‒ all Anglo-Saxon monosyllables. Or we can say it in a fancier, more distant, abstract, Latinate way, like "I prefer not to permit myself to approach such a notion." Or, in a passage of plain Anglo-Saxon, you can throw in one Latinate word, unexpectedly, to great effect.
I do love this aspect of language! But, unlike what the title of that last quote states, English is actually very normal! Languages absorbing the prestige language of the area happens ALL THE TIME.
Close to 60% of English vocabulary is Latin and French. That's similar to, or slightly lower than, many languages with a Chinese influence (Japanese is the same, Korean and Vietnamese might have more or less, depending on how you measure. Casual spoken forms of languages often have less borrowings, and obscure technical vocabulary will have more.)
We don't know what the spoken language was like, but Old Nubian writing can have so many Greek loanwords it can be difficult to tell if a text is Greek with a few Nubian words, or Old Nubian but mostly loanwords! Ottoman Turkish borrowed so much Arabic and Persian that it was mostly unintelligible to normal Turkish speakers. Only a 1/3 of Yaghnobi words are actually Eastern Iranian, and it's ancestor, Sogdian, was similar - Persian, Turkic, Russian, Chinese, Sanskrit, Aramaic, Greek - it seems harder to find languages that DIDN'T leave their mark!
And borrowing from Latin, and then French, its descendent, is just as normal. Khmer contains a large number of borrowings from Sanskrit and its descendants, especially Pali. Japanese borrowed from multiple Chinese dynasties, and now some Kanji have several similar pronunciations, each based on a different reborrowing.
And there are languages that go much farther than us!
25% of English is Germanic, including a (possibly) surprising amount of Old Norse and Dutch. That includes most of the core vocabulary and grammar.
Mixed languages don't have a 'core'. They combine multiple languages in more complex ways.
Michif - which developed in central Canada as Cree and French voyageurs (fur traders) worked together and created their own culture (the Métis) - combines elements of Plains Cree, French, and other languages like Ojibwe, Assiniboine, and English. It developed among people who were fully bilingual, retaining complex elements of both main languages. There's more French words than Cree, but it's impossible to say that they're 'loanwords' or 'host language words'.
Language is great. Nothing is pure. Delight in the normality!
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