How does that make them fake English words? Almost every word in English comes from some other language, either German or French or Latin or Celtic etc. That doesn't mean those words are not real English words or that they don't have English spellings.
I'm gonna have to disagree with ya, jimandnat: 75-80% of English words are "non-native" – i.e. NOT from Old-English or Germanic sources. A good chunk of English words come down from Latin, but usually through French or other Romance languages; the rest of the foreign loaner word are from Greek and a smattering other random languages. It's fair to say that German and OLD English are "sister" languages (at least in the way that you mean it: "derived from a common source"), but not German and MODERN English. Only a quarter-ish of Modern English words come from Old English and Germanic (but not Modern German) sources.
It's not exactly a given that Modern English is descended from Old English either. There's actually a pretty strong argument for English instead deriving from Old Norse with substantial amounts of loanwords from Old English rather than the other way around. The most compelling reasons being that middle (and modern) English uses Norse rather than Old English grammar and that it first is attested from the then Viking-ruled parts of England. So English may well be North Germanic rather than West Germanic in origin.
Clive- I get that bee was probably replying sarcastically. Soccer was not. I was responding to each in case there were other people who thought like Soccer. whoosh!
The problem with using vocabulary as a measure of language origin is that an absolute ton of the words you'll find even in standard dictionaries are scientific terminologies that nobody uses in normal conversation, and which primarily come from Latin, Greek or both. Whereas the majority of the words we use on an everyday basis will in fact be from Germanic. So there's a bit of confusion there I think
I suggest that the definition of matinee should be broader than just a movie. In Australia the most common usage is for afternoon performances of plays/theatre productions.
GROUCHO: Now, Columbus had to send out an S.O.S one night because of a mutiny.
CHICO: No, no. They don't have mutinees at night. Mutinees Wednesday and Saturday.
I hope that settles it.