I didn't get a chance to fully read this massive thread, but from the small bit I did get a chance to read so far, I am surprised nobody made the point that to a speaker of German or Dutch, they would understand far more Old English words than we would. Everyone involved in that argument kept acting like English was the only surviving language with Germanic roots. It sounded to me like Douglas was implying that these OE words were dead, when that's simply not true. You can observe these words descendants just fine in other modern Germanic languages.