Latin is the dominant donor language to most modern European languages, which were in turn influential donor languages to Malay due to colonization between the 16th and 20th centuries. This study conducted a vocabulary survey to assess the benefits of using word categories of frequently used English vocabulary of Latin and Greek origins and their Malay equivalents for learning Malay as a foreign language. The Oxford 3000 list served as the primary reference of high-frequency English words and their Malay equivalents. Latin or Greek loanwords constitute approximately 10.6% of the most frequently used 3,000 Malay words and more than a half of these loanwords can be used with a similar pronunciation in Japanese. Therefore, this study concluded that knowledge of high-frequency English vocabulary of Latin and Greek origins could assist speakers of English and/or Japanese in learning Malay.