Replies

Found it...
Skipped a bit of minor formatting (it's 6 am and I've got to get to work!)

RG

The Year 1000: What Life was like at the Turn of the First Millennium
An Englishman’s World

Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger

p.30

Computer analysis of the English language as spoken today shows that the hundred most frequently used words are all of Anglo-Saxon origin: the, is, you – the basic building blocks.23 When Winston Churchill wanted to rally the nation in 1940, it was to Anglo-Saxon that he turned: “We shall fight on the beaches; we shall fight on the landing grounds; we shall fight in the fields and the streets; we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” All these stirring words came from Old English, as spoken in the year 1000, with the exception of the last one, surrender, a French import that came with the Normans in 1066 – and when man set foot on the moon in 1969, the first human words spoken had similar echoes: “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Each of Neil Armstrong’s famous words was part of Old English by the year 1000.

23. McCrum, Robert, MacNeil, Robert, and Cran, William. The Story of English. London: Faber & Faber, 1992 p.58