English language, West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family that is closely related to the Frisian, German, and Dutch (in Belgium called Flemish) languages.
Which European language did English come from?
English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands.
Is English an Indo-European language?
English, like more than 400 other languages, is part of the Indo-European language family , sharing common roots not just with German and French but with Russian, Hindi, Punjabi, and Persian.
What language family does English belong to?
Other branches of the Indo-European language family have evolved into completely different groups. One example is the Germanic languages . Linguists generally describe Germanic languages in three groups: West Germanic, North Germanic, and East Germanic. The West Germanic group includes German, English, and Dutch.
What are the branches of the Indo-European language family?
The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic ; and another six subdivisions which are now extinct.
What languages did English come from?
Having emerged from the dialects and vocabulary of Germanic peoples —Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—who settled in Britain in the 5th century CE, English today is a constantly changing language that has been influenced by a plethora of different cultures and languages, such as Latin, French, Dutch, and Afrikaans.
What languages made English?
So, English is made of Old English, Danish, Norse, and French , and has been changed by Latin, Greek, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Dutch and Spanish, along with some words from other languages. English grammar has also changed, becoming simpler and less Germanic.
Where do Indo-European languages come from?
Indo-European languages came from a common root about 15,000 years ago . Researchers led by Professor Mark Pagel at the University of Reading have just published a report which finds that Indo-European languages came from a common root, a proto-Eurasian, about 15,000 years ago.
Is English a Germanic language?
German is widely considered among the easier languages for native English speakers to pick up. That's because these languages are true linguistic siblings—originating from the exact same mother tongue. In fact, eighty of the hundred most used words in English are of Germanic origin.
What are the languages that come under the Germanic branch of Indo-European language?
Dutch, English, Frisian, and Yiddish are some examples of modern survivors of the West Germanic sub-branch, while Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish are survivors of the North Germanic branch.
Why English is the international language?
Most people consider English to be a global language because it is the one language that is spoken and understood by the majority of the population in almost every region of the world . ... It is perhaps this worldwide acceptance and usage of the English language that propels it as an extremely essential global language.
Who made the English language?
The history of the English language really started with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany.
Why is English a Germanic language?
Evolution takes time, and despite 58% of English vocabulary (more than half) coming from Romance languages (Latin and French), linguists still consider English to be a Germanic language to this day because of how the language followed human migration patterns and the grammar of modern English .
What do you mean by Indo-European language?
Definition of Indo-European languages
: a family of languages comprising those spoken in most of Europe and in the parts of the world colonized by Europeans since 1500 and also in Persia, the subcontinent of India, and some other parts of Asia.
What are the three main language families in Europe?
Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language; within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Romance, Germanic, and Slavic with more than 200 million speakers each, between them accounting for close to 90% of Europeans.
What was the first Indo-European language?
The first Indo-European language was, by definition, the Proto-Indo-European language , which was spoken in the 4th millennium BC. The first attested Indo-European language is Hittite, first written in the 17th century BC.
Which language came first Spanish or English?
I'm not an expert on English, but for what it's worth, Wikipedia dates Modern English to the 15th Century, with Shakespeare and the King James Bible being its literary markers. In sum, English is older than Spanish .
What language makes up Old English?
Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.
Is English a Latin derived language?
British and American culture. English has its roots in the Germanic languages, from which German and Dutch also developed, as well as having many influences from romance languages such as French. (Romance languages are so called because they are derived from Latin which was the language spoken in ancient Rome.)
When did English become the official language of England?
English became the language of Parliament and of legislation in the 15th century , half a century after it had become the language of the king and of most of the English nobility.
How much of English words come from Anglo Saxon Germanic and French language?
In 2016, English vocabulary is 26% Germanic, 29% French , 29% Latin, 6% from Greek and the remaining 10% from other languages and proper names. All together, French and Latin (both Romance languages) account for 58% of the vocabulary used in today's English.
Is English more French or German?
The short answer: German . However, English is basically a Creole Language of Old French and Old English. The basic elements and grammar of English is more closely related to German than French and most of our verbs are German.
Is Russian Indo-European language?
Russian (русский язык, tr. russkiy yazyk) is an East Slavic language native to Russia in Eastern Europe. It is a part of the Indo-European language family , and is one of four living East Slavic languages, and also part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch.
Is English from Latin or German?
English is a Germanic language , with a grammar and a core vocabulary inherited from Proto-Germanic. However, a significant portion of the English vocabulary comes from Romance and Latinate sources.
Is English a Creole?
Senior Member. English is not a creole . A creole is a pidgin language which has become a mother tongue. A pidgin is a grammatically simplified form of a language with elements taken from local languages, used for communication between people not sharing a common language.
What language did they speak in England before English?
Old English language, also called Anglo-Saxon , language spoken and written in England before 1100; it is the ancestor of Middle English and Modern English. Scholars place Old English in the Anglo-Frisian group of West Germanic languages.
Why is English so different from other Germanic languages?
Because English had a lot of other influences : it was influenced by Old Saxon, Norse (viking invasion), and French (therefore, Latin) (Norman invasion), this mix made English. The short answer is English isn't simply another Germanic language such as Dutch or Danish.
What branch of language tree is German?
| Germanic | Linguistic classification Indo-European Germanic | Proto-language Proto-Germanic | Subdivisions North Germanic West Germanic East Germanic (extinct) | ISO 639-2 / 5 gem |
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Is English a Teutonic language?
TEUTONIC ( GERMANIC ) LANGUAGES,' a comprehensive term for a number of languages most of which are still spoken at the present time, namely English, Frisian, Dutch, Flemish, German (both High and Low) and the various Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish, Icelandic and the Norwegian dialects).
English is a Germanic language
Indeed, both the German and English languages are considered to be members of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, meaning they are still closely related today. ... Furthermore, the modern languages have both loaned words from Latin, Greek and French.
Is English North Germanic?
Much of the basic vocabulary of English was adopted from their North Germanic language, Old East Norse. As a result, English is the most North Germanic of the West Germanic languages .
What branch of language is German?
German language, German Deutsch, official language of both Germany and Austria and one of the official languages of Switzerland. German belongs to the West Germanic group of the Indo-European language family , along with English, Frisian, and Dutch (Netherlandic, Flemish).
Is English the global language?
People often talk about English as a global language or lingua franca. With more than 350 million people around the world speaking English as a first language and more than 430 million speaking it as a second language, there are English speakers in most countries around the world. Why is English so popular, though?
Is English still the international language?
English is a vibrant and international language with twenty percent of the world's population speaking English as native, second or foreign language.
What is the official international language?
English is the foremost—and by some accounts only—world language. Beyond that, there is no academic consensus about which languages qualify; Arabic, French, Russian, and Spanish are other possible world languages. Some authors consider Latin to have formerly been a world language.
Did England invent English?
English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century , are collectively called Old English.
When did English become the international language?
It[English] has replaced French as the lingua franca of diplomacy since World War II. The rise of English in diplomacy began in 1919 , in the aftermath of World War I, when the Treaty of Versailles was written in English as well as in French, the dominant language used in diplomacy until that time.
