"The thing that struck me when I put together this list was that 90% of the top 100 words were onesyllable, and that a large proportion were actually from Old English, meaning the basic words we use all the time in basic sentences are from before the Norman Conquest, " he said.
Finally, note that there are just 14 words in the revised sentence, compared with 19 in the original, and that nine of them are one-syllable, three are two-syllable and two are three-syllable.