UTC I originally assumed that the version of the story I heard that in the passage from we shall fight on the beaches to we shall never surrender all the words are from Old English roots except surrender which is from French was a joke someone having a poke at the French but it s absolutely correct I checked this all out in the Online Etymological Dictionary and every word in that clip is from Old English with the exception of surrender which is indeed from Old French And apologies to anyone with French ancestry links I have not forgotten Verdun Since this is an interesting factoid well the Old English part not the part about surrender and since it is something that seems to come up often particularly as that section of this speech is so universally known I think it s worth mentioning in the article something along the lines of In the very well known passage from the peroration from we shall fight on the beaches to we shall never surrender every single word is from Old English roots except the very last I know Wikipedia is not Snopes but it s i true and ii something people might come here to look for an answer about so I would think it belongs Comments 02 46 10 February 2011