Is English Really a Germanic Language?

Today we delve into the history of the English language and look at the Germanic, Romance, and other influences that have shaped the Modern English of today.
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@4:39 to 4:50 there's an error: the text should say "Middle English" not "Modern English". Both are true, but at that moment I'm talking about the changes from OE to Middle English.
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**Clarification regarding the word "in":
A lot of people have commented saying that "in" is of Germanic origin, which matches what I had previously thought. When researching this video I looked up the etymology of "in" and read that it's of Latin origin, meaning "into, in, on, upon". So I thought that it must have been one of the early borrowings into Germanic dialects that I mentioned in the video.
But I went back and checked the source again, and I realized that the dictionary entry I was reading was for the PREFIX "in－", not the standalone word. The standalone word has always existed in the Germanic language family. And ultimately, both the Germanic and Latin words come from the Proto-Indo-European word "en".**
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Outro: “Urban Tough” by Media Right Productions.

[@joaquinmoreno6891]

Sometimes children have the best answers. I will explain why I don't quite see English as a hybrid: My household is absolutely Latin, my wife being Italian and me being Spanish. And we live in Germany. So our two-year-old daughter knows that Spanish is a language, and Italian is another language, and she knows they're both quite similar, so she tends to mix the two. She's also familiar with German but she knows it's quite different and it's the language of the people outside our house, so she doesn't mix it with Spanish or Italian very often. Now English comes into play: An American guy comes to our place once a week to clean. So my daughter knows English is another language, but she sees it as a different kind of German. When the guy says something in English to her she answers in German! She doesn't understand much English, but to the prejudice-free ears of my baby, the few things she does understand seem to sound closer to German. She also answers in German, when I say something in English. Same thing happens every time we go to the Netherlands or Denmark: she speaks German in those situations. So, from the point of view of a Latin baby, you guys are clearly Germanic - but maybe she will change her mind the day she starts reading in these languages.

[@jose_reyes1111]

Es muy interesante todo lo que mencionas, ojalá tu hija pueda hablar perfectamente los 4 idiomas desde muy joven, he conocido algunos casos de bebés en situaciones similares y los padres prefieren "no confundir" a sus hijos hablándoles sólo en un idioma cuando justo pueden aprender fácilmente los que sean.

[@imammasri_1858]

That's so cute!!

[@puma1304]

buena acotacion!

[@kasebmohamed5468]

as it was said before, I think that from a purely linguistic and scientific point of view there is no debate, English is a Germanic language, in its core vocabulary and structure it has very little in common with French and a lot with Dutch and German (strong verbs and basic words like colours, body parts or family are a clear indication, even phonology is by far more Germanic than Romance) but apart from that I'm very interested in the way people feel their own language, without any scientific considerations, just from personal feelings, and your comment is easily one of the most interesting I've ever read about that! that reminds me of another story that I had read on another site: two children, one English and one Dutch, who were on holidays in France, they were both exposed to French, couldn't understand anything of it and were seeing it clearly as a foreign language, but when they met together they thought that they spoke the same language, and each one thought that the other one was just speaking "strangely", finally they managed to understand each other to some extent! the children may find it easier to deal with the regular sound shifts that separate English and Dutch (great-groot, red-rood etc...), whereas the adults may be more hindered by the habit of hearing their language in only one way

[@TheSharpmarksman]

English to german ears sounds very familiar it's strange how children can understand foreign langauges without learning them i've always wondered how this process works

[@eduardomachado2225]

I think English the most latin of the germanic languages and French is the most germanic of the latin languages ... haha

[@andrzejdobrowolski9523]

And Polish is the most latinised Slavic language since we use alot of words of Latin origin that have no native Polish - Slavic equivalents

[@LuisRincon-wr4dm]

And Romanian is the most slavicized of the Roman Languages.

[@taintedtaylor2586]

Not really, there are languages that have more Germanic influence, for example: Romansch and Friulian. The “Germanic” part of French is actually close to almost any other Romance language, like Italian and Spanish.

[@sofiasbd8259]

French has a lot of celtic influences also

[@chsgrate5362]

I mean yeah,I cant understand German,knowing English so,yeah

[@TheTubeYou251]

As a native german speaker, English feels much closer to German than e.g. Italian, both in vocabulary and in grammar and phrases. When translating German to English, you can often get away by translating word for word and maybe reordering them, whereas for Italian, you often kinda have to recreate the sentence from scratch. So English being a germanic language makes totally sense to me.

[@Regular_Decorated_Emergency]

And then there’s Anglish, which literally sounds like German but smoother …

[@vincentlefebvre9255]

In vocabulary english is much closer to french. Wie viele Sprachen sprechen Sie ? Ich spreche fließend Französiche und Englisch. Glauben sie mich.

[@vovk764]

But what about ther typical German grammatic contruction that the verb comes in the end of a sentence? Totally impossible in English. Which is why a word-to-word translation from French makes more sense.

[@vincentlefebvre9255]

@@vovk764 ....and the past participle precedes the auxiliary !

[@anglosaxon4571]

​@@vincentlefebvre9255 Germanic doesn't only mean German, west Frisian is the closest to English after Scots and I as an English speaker can understand west Frisian and even old Frisian more than I can understand french.

[@Flipdonyk]

I'm a french person who learned English and German. My experience is that learning English was tough as a start because there was so many new words to learn but after reaching a certain level (B1) it becomes really easy. I suppose it's because most complicated words in English come from latin or french. My experience with learning German is the opposite: the basic vocabulary is easy since it resembles Englisch. However after reaching B1 everything becomes so much harder. At this point I have to learn every new word without shortcut... So I 100% agree: English feels very Germanic in it's basic structure. French words seem to have been added on top to sound fancy.

[@adolforodolfo6929]

I am an English person who learned French and German. My experience very much mirrors yours. I didn't learn them in the same depth; I studied French through university and am more or less bi-lingual, whereas I studied German just for three years at school and that was fifty years ago now. But your experience is fundamentally the same as mine: the beginnings of learning German were easier than the beginnings of learning French, because of the similarity of the German and English words. But then, when you move into "higher" studies, with a focus on literature, French is much easier to read than German because, as you move from everyday language to more elevated, formal language, the English vocabulary gets ever closer to French/Latin and ever further away from German. One thing that doesn't change though is the structure/grammar - that is still Germanic however Romance the vocabulary becomes.

[@Laura-ln5zw]

Definitely. I'm Spanish and Catalan speaker and my sensation is that at first is really far away from my latin languages, but now I am studying C1 english level and the vocabulary is very identical to latin words. Verbs have also the same structure of times as a latin language, only that is studied in another way.

[@adolforodolfo6929]

@@Laura-ln5zw I'm surprised that you say that English verbs at times have the same structure as a Latin language - they are much closer in structure to German verbs. In particular, in English and other Germanic languages, the future and conditional tenses are formed with an auxiliary verb plus the infinitive, not by changing the ending of the verb; strong (i.e. irregular) verbs in English work in the same way as strong verbs in German - if fact they are usually the same verbs and irregular in the same way. There are several other similarities too. The conjugation of verbs in English has simplified a lot over the centuries; if you go back to the English of Chaucer (late 14th century), the similarities between English and German verbs are very apparent.

[@Laura-ln5zw]

@@adolforodolfo6929 Only Search "Verbo Haber conjugación" Haber (Spanish) = Have (English) and after a little study you'll see that it is the same. Only that in English don't study in the same way. For instance, the Present conditional in English is "Would + verb in infinitive" like "would go", or the Present of the subjunctive is "I hope I have something". Moreover, when in Spanish we say "yo he ido", we are saying "I have gone". So in both cases, we say "have+past participle", and this structure of Present Perfert is in all Latin languages but with another name. Thus, in English, the verbs have the same word for many subject pronouns but with the same time structure as Latin language verbs.

[@adolforodolfo6929]

@@Laura-ln5zw I don't argue that the perfect tense structure is not similar between English and Latin languages, but it is also the same between English and the Germanic languages such as German and Dutch. If anything you would assume that the Latin languages have adopted the Germanic way of forming the perfect tense, since classical Latin itself did not form the perfect tense in this way (I don't actually assume this myself). What is more significant is the way that English forms the future and conditional tenses and the similarity between the strong (irregular) verbs in English and the other Germanic languages. Other similarities you may see, for example, between pronouns are to do with the common Indo-European root of European languages - English pronouns are much closer to Dutch/German ones than to any Latin languages. As for the subjunctive, we don't really have one in English, not anymore, it fell out of use centuries ago; it is only retained in a few set expressions. There really is no debate on this; English is a Germanic language - but one that, now (not always in the past) has a lot of Romance words in its higher vocabulary (not so many in the words we use most of the time when speaking)

[@joseamategarcia9276]

For a Spanish, to learn Portuguese, Italian or even French is like to walk along a path, but to learn a Germanic language is like to jump a big wall, English has the smallest wall, but still a wall.

[@blaspayri]

I agree

[@___Kelli___]

I am a native English speaker and I have studied Latin, German and some Portuguese and I must say Latin and Portuguese were much more difficult for me than German.

[@Paulashfordpoems]

As a native English speaker, I learnt Spanish fairly easily, because of the enormous amount of Latin words in English maybe, but also can understand Italian and Portuguese pretty much cos of Spanish. But the Germanic languages are more difficult for me. Now according to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of languages, the closest language to English is now Italian, taking all aspects of language into account.

[@joseamategarcia9276]

@@Paulashfordpoems there are a couple of hard things in English for a Spanish speaker, for example, the vowels, we have five of them, but there are 12 in English, I can not notice the difference between, ship and sheep, sheet and shit, but and bat, cut and cat, etc... and I know, for you the difference is clear, another thing are the phrasal verbs, tell me the true, English invented them for no Spanish could speak English. Didn't you?

[@FenriZz]

AJAJA si creo

[@catlessor5597]

Honestly as someone learning german, sometimes I'll hear a sentence, and know what it means just because it sounds like the sentence in English.

[@herrfriberger5]

A germanic language like swedish is even closer to english, especially regarding word order, although usually not spoken as slowly and clearly (to english ears) as high german tend to be. The viking influence being a partial explanation here, the common low german connection another. Saxons, angles, jutes, and scandinavians shared almost the same proto-germanic language (from the late nordic bronze age, iron age and onwards). (English and swedish also share many french loans, making them even closer, but that's another story.)

[@Ricky911_]

Same

[@christophedel2642]

@Rodrigo O real Englishmen have Germanic appearance not really look like Mr bean

[@helensilver1381]

I, too, am learning German. Often I understand a word because of the English connection to the German word ("world" = "welt").

[@themischeifgameratmicks8448]

Agree

[@k.tanaka3032]

I'm a Japanese who have studied Chinese. I think English is still one of the germanic languages, because I impassed your opinion that there are more Latin words in English news papers than just in the usual conversation. It is exactly the same case as quite a few of Chinese words in Japanese. There are a lot more Chinese rooted words even in Japanese academic words comparing to it. However, Japanese is a still Japonic languages rather than Sino-Tibetan languages, because their basic grammars and pronunciation are completely different each other.

[@vincentlefebvre9255]

Do not confuse latin and french.

[@god6326]

True

[@palepilgrim1174]

@@vincentlefebvre9255 Why not? French is just Vulgar Latin with a ton of Frankish loanwords.

[@vincentlefebvre9255]

@@palepilgrim1174 Tu sembles être un expert linguiste ? Jusqu'à quel point fais-tu la différence entre le latin et le français ? Le parles-tu d'abord ? Moi j'ai étudié le latin durant quatre ans et je suis parfaitement bilingue. De plus je parle un peu allemand. Très comique de voir à quel point les anglophones réagissent très mal lorsqu'on leur souligne à quel point leur langue contient un nombre ahurissant de vocabulaire français. Des mots venus DIRECTEMENT du français et non du latin. Hormis le français le latin a donné naissance à un grand pourcentage de mots de la langue anglaise, ceci en bonne partie due au clergé. Use google translation.

[@adolforodolfo6929]

@@vincentlefebvre9255 You seem to have a strangely nationalistic view of language. All the Romance languages are derivatives of Latin. As "pale pilgrim" says, French is a mixture of vulgar Latin and Frankish loanwords. You can find many books written by expert linguists (French ones at that) documenting how French developed from Latin. I am an Anglophone, English to be precise, I don't have any problem with the French language either - I love it and have devoted many years of my life to studying it. I don't react badly at all when somebody points out that modern English contains a huge amount of French/Latin vocabulary; it would be ridiculous to react badly to a clear, undeniable fact; and I'm not nationalistic about language, I don't think that English would be improved if it were in some way "purified" by purging it of Romance derived words and replacing them with Germanic equivalents (there are some weird people who actually advocate this). I do react to people who claim that English is in some way a Romance language derived from French, but not with hurt nationalistic pride, simply with amusement at their linguistic ignorance.

[@jdane2277]

I definitely see English as a Germanic language. I learned French after English as a child but never mixed them up. I learned German as an adult and the two seem to mix to me, the structure somehow was familiar. I learned it way faster despite the declensions and complex plurals. It just made more sense.

[@YTYY]

Its propably because of the huge influence of Latin and French in the German language too.

[@jdane2277]

@@YTYY It's definitely there. Words like "probieren" from Latin "Probare" to test. Of course now the word favored is "testen" .

[@YTYY]

@@jdane2277 Thats not quite true. Probieren means: to try, while testen means: to test. The word "test" was borrowed from the English language to the German however the origin of the word was French. German is my main language btw.

[@jdane2277]

@@YTYY When I studied German years and years ago, the word "testen" wasn't in our considerable vocabulary (mostly in books.) Things change in language.

[@mariamelliusfalkenhayn481]

Agreed

[@TheYopogo]

A Dutch person once told me that English sounds like "a drunk Frisian trying to speak French"

[@languagelover8102]

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@angelmiau8445]

In germany Dutch sounds like a german being drunk.

[@mrbond4722]

Dutch is civilized German. 😁

[@patentleatherkicks]

That's not too far off from what actually happened historically

[@Steve-zc9ht]

@@angelmiau8445 as a English speaker I heard from the French that English sounds like vary broken french

[@TheBruteOne]

It's impossible to form a sentence in modern English using romance words only, but yet you can form simple sentences using Germanic vocabulary only

[@misterios-resolvidos]

is (latin), impossible (latin), form (latin), sentence (latin), in (latin), modern (latin), using (latin), romance (latin), form (latin), simple (latin), sentences (latin), using (latin), vocabulary (latin).

[@TheBruteOne]

@@misterios-resolvidos Sorry, wrong! ;-) you'r almost right except it’s = it is = es ist = = het = hita = Hit = sin = got = wean = bjiu = Old/Proto Germanic Old Frisian, in = in, into, upon, on, at, among; about, during = Middle English / Proto Germanic Old Frisian, as mentioned, it's impossible to form a proper sentence in English without Germanic words

[@misterios-resolvidos]

@@TheBruteOne I had my doubts, but as in Latin, "is" is "es" or "est", and "in" is the same, in Latin: "in"

[@nicoundso4019]

@@misterios-resolvidos Yes it's the same in latin but it comes from proto Germanic🤦‍♂️

[@nicoundso4019]

@@misterios-resolvidos Just because something is similar to that from Latin doesn't mean it doesn't come from Germanic. 80% of the most used words are of geemanic origin. the core words are all germanic

[@Xpistos510]

English at its core is Germanic. It is mixed with many Latin, French, Norman, and Greek terms, but it originated as a Germanic language.

[@ricktripathi8082]

no the germanic at its very core is indo european means it originated from sanskrit whreas english have different grammar

[@awellculturedmanofanime1246]

​@ricktripathi8082 least delusional indian nationalist my guy your language come from indo Europeans 😂

[@eddyavailable]

correct. the german conquered the island that is now known is england. the natives did not speak english.

[@MrLantean]

English is classified as Germanic due to its grammatical structure identical with other Germanic languages like German and Dutch. Its vocabulary is strongly influenced by Romance languages especially Norman French. It is estimated that perhaps 50 to 60 percentage of the vocabulary is of Romance origins. There is a linguistic society attempt to create a much purer Germanic form of English known as Anglish by using vocabulary of Germanic origins instead Romance origins.

[@eddyavailable]

@@MrLantean also in the history...england was conquered by the west germanic people. basically the people there are mostly of german origin.

[@johnhazlett3711]

Spanish has 5 vowel, and a couple of dipthongs. French is a hair more complicated. But English has 13 vowel sounds if I remember correctly. Spanish is almost perfectly phonetic, it's pronounced how it's spelled, but English can drive even native speakers crazy. English Grammer is more similar to German, and the word order in Spanish is often different.

[@jk844100]

English has 20 vowel sounds if you include diphthongs. And 24 consonant sounds.

[@Jollofmuncher2000]

When it comes to word use, all the romance languages are anything but simple compared to English. To put us short, the just stays the in English so English as an entry point is bit easier then even Spanish (learning a language is hard regardless)

[@eErLaChO]

French has 16 vowel sounds

[@jk844100]

@@eErLaChO French has 12 according to Google

[@eErLaChO]

@@jk844100 Yes because google is never wrong lol! Do a better check, there are 16 including the nasal ones.

[@afz902k]

Being a romance language native speaker, I'd say to me English always felt 99% germanic, despite the immense amount of non germanic vocabulary, due to structure, rhythm and pronunciation.

[@siriemapantanal6894]

Wrong. The English language is not even a flexive language like the German and it has about 80% of the vocabulary composed of words of Latin origin. How do you say that this language is 99% Germanic? It is not even 10%.

[@siriemapantanal6894]

It seems you have no idea what you are writing. First: the Germanic languages are flexive language, the English language is not; second: the German language has declination, direct influence of Latim, the English language, not; third: the German language has gender, the English language, not. fourth: the alphabetical pronunciation of the German language is completely different from the English language. Define Romance language, please. I think you mean local dialects with elements of Latin like the English and German languages. Did you know that Britain and Germany were also Roman colonies for more than five centuries like all those countries that many ignorant people call "Latin countries"?

[@luffypirateking1068]

@@siriemapantanal6894 Lol you are Indian what do you know

[@siriemapantanal6894]

@@luffypirateking1068 Indian, me? What ignorance. Siriema is a bird and pantanal is the place in the American continent where this bird inhabits.

[@edwardbernthal160]

@@siriemapantanal6894 well whatever you are you are certainly a nasty piece of work.

[@knitterscheidt]

my grandparents were German immigrants to the U.S., as a child I thought their German was just a kind of English spoken at home, more gemütlich than the formal English spoken in the outside world

[@gibranaditama2256]

Ja stimmt

[@presidentjiang6762]

Nazi

[@secretagent0280]

Interesting. I'm not surprised.

[@faisal3398]

@@presidentjiang6762 commie

[@putinisaterrorist2047]

As a german english doesn't really Sound germanic to me at all..... Dutch, danish, Swedish, icelandic etc. are germanic sounding languages but not english

[@KrazoanSpectre]

Native English speaker who is learning some Norwegian for fun and an enthusiast of Old English/Old Norse: English at its core is still Germanic I feel. I am picking up Norwegian at a rather alarming rate due to the similarities that the languages clearly share. This goes not only for vocabulary similarities, but also in most sentence structure at their core. With a little work, you can also find much of our everyday speech can be found in Old English passages if you look for it.

[@WGGplant]

For real. Some people think English is actually a north Germanic language, bc of its grammatical similarities to Norwegian

[@cryf1840]

I'm so glad I saw this, because I've had an eerily similar experience with Danish.

[@Claude_van_Kloten]

Norwegian was heavily influenced by Low German because of the Hanseatic League and later trade relations and German settlement in Norway.

[@tobirama5275]

The most important words of English are Germanic. English: love, water, sun, moon, friend German: liebe, wasser, sonne, monde, Freund Latin: Amare, aqua, solis, luna, amicus Spanish: Amor, agua, sol, luna, amigo

[@user-qi8pp1rr2q]

French: amour, eau, soleil, lune, ami

[@tobirama5275]

@gipcambero Wedding is used more than marriage. Usually all those words copied from French lack the Latin root word. Like in the word anniversary Annus + Versus = anniversarius Latín: annus Spanish: año French: an German: jahr English: year

[@PopescuVicentiu]

@@user-qi8pp1rr2q ROmanian: amor (iubire-comes from slavic libov), apa (similar acvariu-aquarium for fish), Soare (solar comes from French: solaire), Luna, amic (prieten)

[@onemanmob6756]

Being myself of Slavic origin, having learnt English, German and French I can definitely confirm that English is a Germanic language - the whole foundation, like grammar has much more in common with German than French. If English language was a building - its foundations would be Germanic, main structure mostly Germanic and the rendering - mostly Romance.

[@josephbrabander9124]

Excellent analysis. Slavic languages are quite different from western languages. Most are heavily inflected and articles are non-existent.

[@Odinsday]

@@josephbrabander9124 Slavic languages have more in common grammatically with languages like Latin due to their heavy case inflections. English, while it doesn’t have noun cases like German, it is obviously Germanic. It’s simplified structure has more in common with Swedish or Danish, which are north Germanic languages due to them also being heavily simplified from 1000 years ago. Still, it is clear that English is closer to German and Dutch, even with the millennium of romance and Norse influence.

[@marypetrie930]

Brilliant explanation.

[@erikeriksson1660]

@@Odinsday Could be so that the structure of english was influenced by old norse.

[@JBguitar-cj8pc]

Exactly. English borrows a shit ton of French words but when it comes to grammar rules, it’s completely different.

[@JorisWeima]

I'm Dutch and I clearly remember that when I was a young kid and couldn't understand ANY english yet, the english language sounded very 'natural' to me, very familiair. Especially British english.

[@DLC1325]

As a native English speaker whenever I hear Dutch being spoken it sounds like I should be able to understand what is being said but I can't!

[@ThePlataf]

English has roots in Friesian, and Dutch people usually speak perfect English, which I really respect. I remember he postwar years when shiploads of Dutch migrated to Australia without knowing a word of English, and about a month later, they were chatting away to us in English.

[@rararasputin4447]

To me Dutch has always sounded similar to some of the more niche dialects of English in Northern England.

[@ThePlataf]

@@rararasputin4447 I don't speak any Dutch- the harsh guttural sounds are a turn-off, yet if I look through a Dutch magazine, I can usually get the gist of what an article is about.

[@katinasvenska]

Shrug.

[@luvwomen4359]

All the words in this paragraph are Germanic. Try writing a paragraph using only Romance words. Our friends are coming to our house. We haven't seen them since last summer so it will be good to see them. They are bringing their kids. Our son and daughter get along with their kids so they will be glad to see them also. We have a swimming pool and all the kids are good swimmers and love to play in the pool. We are going to go to the beach on Sunday. The weather can be bad even in the summer. Either too hot or cold and windy, but hopefully it will be good. There's nothing better than hanging out at the beach, kicking back, sunbathing, eating good food and drinking cold beer.

[@ANCalias]

Beer -> bière (french)

[@luvwomen4359]

Middle English ber, going back to Old English bēor, akin to Old High German bior "beer," Old Norse bjórr; perhaps all going back to a dissimilated form of Germanic *breura-, a nominal derivative of *brewwan- "to BREW@@ANCalias

[@ANCalias]

@@luvwomen4359 I'm not etymologist but look very similar to the french word and I'm pretty sur that french has more influence english than the other The prononciation of the french word is beear so if we consider the sift between the middle and modern english, the word was something like Bear (for both ea like in meat) Anyway this word enter in the french tong via the frankish so the question isn't about the germanic proto-origin but about what language introduce this word in english. Maybe is just a word with doble origin (because he was understand by both normans and old english peasant)

[@luvwomen4359]

English is a Germanic language that borrowed heavily from French not the other way around. Even though there are clearly more words of Latin or French origin, the function words - prepositions and conjunctions are mostly Germanic. This is why you can make a long sentence using only Germanic words but it's impossible to do the same using only words of Latin or French origin. @@ANCalias

[@rahulshinde7464]

I would definitely rate English as a Germanic language. I learnt English in school and have done all of my education till Graduation in English. I started learning German in my Bachelor's and could immediately see similarities in frequently used verbs (haben, bringen, essen, rennen, schwimmen), prepositions (auf, an, mit, über, unter, hinter) and personal pronouns (ich, du, wir). The conjugation of verbs and adjectives according to gender was a bit painful but I could pick up the basic language in about 8-10 months, enough to have some fundamental conversation (I spoke with a customs official with 8 months German practice). Now after 18 months I can read Newspapers and get the basic gist of the article. I don't get all of the vocabulary in the newspapers because most of it is constructed by German words and there is little borrowing from Romance languages. However, after a while you get the hang of it. So, yeah I would agree with you that English is a germanic language with a massive Romance vocabulary. As a result I have to learn new words for simpler words in English (Science = Naturwissenschaft, Hospital = Krankenhaus, Health Insurance = Krankenversicherung) :p

[@richardsweden]

I'd call English "A Germanic body with Romance clothes"

[@Caine61]

So it's basically Rollo when he became Duke of Frankia.

[@ianmatthew138]

english is gothic

[@da20082003]

Id say German only with a sense of humour

[@leDespicable]

I once read a comment where someone described English as "German, French and Latin stacked on top of each other wearing a trenchcoat", and to this day I find this to be the most accurate description of the language.

[@viii7258]

@@Caine61 the franks were germanic

[@SWR012]

●Everyone: Romania are you a Latin language? ●Romania: Da!

[@BLexl]

Lol, good one

[@manufacturedfracture]

Hahaha

[@sighi28]

Romania : Desigur !

[@ssn22]

@Felix Carpio well very simple Romanian is a Latin romance with very big influences of Slavic languages same as English is Germanic with deep influence of romance languages !!!!

[@diegomoraesdelucca9716]

Hahaha

[@linear_regression9541]

I'm a Spanish speaker, but I must say that I'm totally in love with the English language. What a beautiful language!

[@jaypeters5224]

Really? I find so many other languages much more beautiful sounding than English. We sound stuffy....especially the ACTUAL English people 😆

[@princessesoftheking7411]

@@jaypeters5224 no, English is beautiful

[@jaypeters5224]

@@princessesoftheking7411 well, yeah I'm not gonna lie, I find certain English accents pretty sexy. Kate Beckinsale for instance, hot with a posh kind of accent. Aiyeee aiyeee......😅 sweatin' a little over here. But I'm Canadian so our accents are pretty lame, eh.....you know what I'm talking aboot. Must be our garbage pail heads 😂

[@jw-ws8dz]

@@jaypeters5224 english has so much dialectal variation that some accents sound really cool while others sound ugly. Imo the general american and canadian accents sound bad while the boston, new york, and certain london accents sound pretty neat. Southern american accent also sounds awesome.

[@discjockey1000]

wow, I never thought of English to be beautiful. Do you think spanish is beautiful?

[@SalahPower]

So much love, respect and appreciation for all of that effort ❤

[@ahamilton2528]

English has a Germanic root, Romance leaves and hybrid fruits Edit: Holy smoke!!! I got 600 likes

[@morganrickards3811]

that's poetry right there

[@eddw7650]

Thats brilliant!

[@sebastiansimonofficial]

@Alex Tejada learn German after having learned English and you will benefit from your knowledge of English. I'm a native German speaker, second language was English, third French. Now I'm up to learn Portuguese. After having studied anglistics and learning Portuguese, I realize how intertwined English, French and Portuguese/Spanish are due to their Latin roots and that most of the rest of English vocab can be found in my mother tongue.

[@sebastiansimonofficial]

@Alex Tejada alright. Thanks for answering anyway (:

[@sebastiansimonofficial]

@Giovanna Fernandes I love learning languages in big chunks like 6-8 hours a day for a few weeks. Unfortunately that's not possible for me lately so I'm stalling somewhat... I won't give up tho

[@dunnobe]

Native Dutch/Flemish speakers learn English so easily when they are young. The distance between the languages isn't far. I used to watch American/English shows, read the subtitles and immediately pick up the basics; bread - brood, water- water, cat - kat, milk - melk, green - groen...

[@Allan_son]

Nederlands also has also borrowed a lot of Latin and French words. So there is both shared germanic vocabulary and shared Romance vocabulary. German has fewer shared Romance words with English.

[@fgconnolly4170]

engels is gwn een Germaans taal *punt*

[@fr3ddyfr3sh]

It’s not that different in German: Brot, Wasser, Katze, Milch, grün. house - Haus, fish - Fisch, wind- Wind, arm - Arm, finger- Finger

[@daninio5004]

@@Allan_son Still most Flemish people in Belgium learn English easier than French alltough French is the 2nd language in Belgium and the 2nd language you learn in school... (in Flemish schools French starts around 10y old and English around 12-14y old)

[@mamavswild]

Flemish is considered the English Language’s ‘closest living linguistic relative’. That’s a thing...

[@adolforodolfo6929]

If you need convincing that English is a Germanic language, not a romance one or some kind of Germano-Romance hybrid, here's a fun little game you can play, as long as your English is good enough, that should enable you to convince yourself. Just take any random piece of English, the lyrics of a song, a passage from a book, a newspaper article. Before you actually start playing the game, just count how many Germanic words there are in it and how many non-Germanic ones - you'll notice that the non-Germanic words are nothing like as much as 60% of the total. But that's not the game; this is. 1. Try to rewrite the piece replacing every non-Germanic word with a Germanic word or short phrase (English ones of course) so that it means the same. 2. Try to rewrite the piece replacing every Germanic word with a Romance word or short phrase (again ones that are found in English) so that it means the same. Game 1 you should be able to win almost every time. Game 2 you will very quickly give up because it is ALWAYS impossible. Here's an example: take the lyrics of the Beatles song 'She Loves You'; excluding the repeated lines, these are: She loves you, yeah You think you've lost your love Well, I saw her yesterday It's you she's thinkin' of And she told me what to say She says she loves you And you know that can't be bad Yes, she loves you And you know you should be glad She said you hurt her so She almost lost her mind But now she says she knows You're not the hurtin' kind You know it's up to you I think it's only fair Pride can hurt you, too Apologize to her Because she loves you With a love like that Counting hyphenated words as single words even when they are really two, there are 100 words here; 98 of them are Germanic, only 2 are not (this alone tells you something about the true linguistic classification of English); these are 'apologize', which comes from Greek via French, and 'because' which is French, although it's kind of hybrid because the 'be-' part is Germanic. It's easy to make the song wholly Germanic - replace 'apologize' with 'say sorry' and 'because' with 'for'. But what about making it wholly non-Germanic? You have to give up straight away because, even if you could come up with a replacement for 'loves' (not that there really is one in common use), you can't replace 'she' or 'you', or 'yeah'.

[@Langfocus]

Excellent post!

[@joedoe783]

Great video and some of the most interesting and thoughtful comments I've ever read in a KZbin comments section.

[@jomellon]

I was born in Scotland, but have lived in France for the last 13 years, spent c. 20 years in Germany and speak all three languages. I feel on a gut level English and German are very related, and French is different.

[@gizmogoose.2486]

French is *way* nasal and sound like they just came out of a damp cold Lascaux cave with soot all over their fingers, and a bad head cold !!!

[@jiayilim1986]

@@gizmogoose.2486??

[@ganzlustig9754]

English has a trove of French/Latin vocabulary!

[@hansriseli6975]

@@gizmogoose.2486 French sounds like South East Asian languages, too many "ng" sound at -on suffix... attention(g) invasion(g) raison(g) =))

[@HonestSaxSound-unEdited-]

Yes Sir, you are right.

[@Levenchannel]

Well(germanic), that(germanic) was(germanic) interesting(latin) lol(internet)

[@Ricky911_]

"Laughing out loud". That is all Germanic

[@newkat3731]

@@Ricky911_ r/wooosh

[@Ricky911_]

@@newkat3731 woosh I think is also Germanic but I'd have to check Btw, I know you're joking. I use Reddit as well

[@newkat3731]

@@Ricky911_ oh lol

[@albertweedsteinthethuggeni7797]

Ja(Spanish) Ja(Spanish) Ja(Spanish) ego risi(Latin) te amo(Latin)

[@Rescue162]

Excellent analysis. In my view after looking at this, common daily speech between friends and family tends to derive from Old English ("I had lunch with some friends"; "I read some books"), while more formal or worldly speech tends to have more Romance words ("The President convened with his cabinet to discuss domestic and foreign policy").

[@iadd3759]

English language by itself, perhaps wouldn't be so interesting and beautiful to speak, write and read without influence of Latin, (France, Spain), German, etc. So, mixing all these meat, fruit, and vegetables you get a nice lunch. I would also add a Serbian language because more than 5000 words are similar with English words. For example: preacher in Serbian is someone who priča(speaks), child in Serbian is a čedo(small boy or girl), thorn in Serbian trn(the same meaning) and so on. By the way, nice video. Thank you so much.

[@michaeltoney2277]

It’s very interesting that English seems to retain the memory of the higher class French rulers and the lower class Anglo Saxon servants from after the conquest in 1066. In common speak we use Germanic words more often but in formal we tend to use French or Latin.

[@lissandrafreljord7913]

You can use a tree analogy for that too. The roots and trunk are the Germanic parts of English, and the leaves and flowers form the Latin parts. The roots and trunk are the most vital part of the tree, as they form the foundation and backbone of the tree. Without the roots and trunk, the tree cannot receive the vital nutrients from the soil to grow, and, thus, it will never flourish. Similarly, English cannot be spoken at all without a single Germanic word. The most common everyday words that form the base of the language are Germanic. On the other hand, the most colorful and academic words in English are of Latin and French origin, just like the most colorful parts of a tree are the leaves and flowers. They are not absolutely vital for the tree to survive (well other than the reproduction cycle for its offsprings), but they get to enjoy the light of day from the highest point of view, and get all the attention from people for their sheer their beauty. Similarly, the most poetic and fancy words of English tend to be of Latin origin. If you attempt speaking English purely with Latin-based words, then you will realize how pretentious you sound. The true identity of English is Germanic, but he just happens to like wearing luxurious Latin-made suits to pass as a gentleman, unlike his other Germanic siblings. And regarding the French Normans and Anglo-Saxons in Britain, we can also make an analogy with the tree model. The rich and educated Norman-French upper-class enjoyed the view of the leaves, flowers, and sun from up above, while the Anglo-Saxon peasants lived underneath the dirt, doing the vital work to support the upper-class.

[@jandron94]

@@lissandrafreljord7913 So were do you place words like "very", "(be)cause", "try", "push", "easy", "please", "just", etc. ? Near the sun or near the dirt ? English is what made it. I propose we take your comment and leave out only the Germanic words and ask an English person to tell us what the text is about. Then we take out only the French/latin words and ask another English person what the text is about. That would be interesting as a test ! Also do you need a language to say "I am hungry" or to create the modern society you live in ?

[@toade1583]

@@jandron94 Those words have Germanic equivalents like "wholly" and "highly" for very and "as" for because.

[@jandron94]

@@toade1583 So from now on please stop using very and because.

[@aleajactaest7242]

English: After a terrible accident, an ambulance arrived within six minutes to evacuate the victims to the hospital. French: Après un terrible accident, une ambulance est arrivée en six minutes pour évacuer les victimes à l'hôpital. German: Nach einem schrecklichen Unfall traf innerhalb von sechs Minuten ein Krankenwagen ein, um die Opfer ins Krankenhaus zu evakuieren. English = 41% French + 33% Germanic + 15% Latin + 5% old Norse + 1% Dutch + 5% Other :)

[@you-cf7df]

So the basic language is Germanic, but the sophisticated vocabulary is Latin.

[@fristnamelastname5549]

Welcome to life. It's a confusing hell hole. Enjoy your stay.

[@Bjowolf2]

Precisely! According to some studies, 70 - 75 % on average of the words used in a normal everyday ( non-scientific etc.) conversation in English are actually of Germanic ( AS and / or ON) origin, and the grammar is completely Germanic, albeit in a much simplified form ( But the peculiar use of the word "do" - seen from a Germanic perspective - may be a Welsh influence in late ME, since Welsh has a similar construction - around AD 14- 1500 or so ). The French and the Latin is "just" the large icing on a very Germanic cake - the Germanic part is the skeleton that holds it all together 😊 Many of the Latin and Greek words are rarely used by most English speaking people or are even unknown or unfamiliar with respect to their meaning - or are often thought of as fancy show-off words in some social groups. This of course all depends a lot on the social status and level of education of the speaker and his / hers dialect etc.

[@mrjimmienoone2130]

@@Bjowolf2 You are right, Beowulf. People with higher social status use more Latin (French...) words. There is also a huge difference between spoken and written language. It is remarkable that Northern Germans tend to learn English much more easily than Southern Germans. This is almost certainly due to the fact that Northern German dialects ("Plattdütsch") are much more similar to English than normal High German. Of course, Angles and Saxons came from the North. So it is useless to compare modern day English to High German. It ought to be compared to Northern German.

[@Bjowolf2]

@@mrjimmienoone2130 Thank you 😉 Yes, we have a bit of the same thing here in Scandinavia - some Latin ( and Greek words) are in common use - transport, inkludere, fusionere, invadere ... - wheras many others exist but are rarely used - or they don't exist at all, since Latin etc. didn't pervade the Scandinavian languages to the same extreme depth as in English.

[@Bjowolf2]

@@mrjimmienoone2130 Yes, and North Germanic ( Old Norse ) in its later stages in the transition into Middle English - both with respect to basic vocabulary and the much simplified and significantly changed grammar ( word order ( "always" SVO, NEVER SOV as in German - but VSO in questions ( before the peculiar use of "do") and V2 in some cases (!) - e.g. "Så [so] giver vi ham hans ting" = " So (then) give we him his things" , lack of cases for nouns and their articles (!) and many parallel irregular verbs).

[@elenamancheva9961]

I'm currently learning German and knowing English helps so much with it. Many words are similar enough to understand. Often if you just sound out the word you can see it's English equivalent. And not just words even prepositions and other particles it's very clear they had a common ancestor. And just the sounds English has sound Germanic idk how to explain it. I've never learned a romance language so i can't compare but i feel like you wouldn't find that many similarities even if the majority of english words come from french or maybe you'll sturggle to see the connections

[@afternoobtea914]

Tycker mycket om att se dina videor.

[@Langfocus]

A lot of people have commented saying that "in" is of Germanic origin, which matches what I had previously thought. When researching this video I looked up the etymology of "in" and read that it's of Latin origin, meaning "into, in, on, upon". So I thought that it must have been one of the early borrowings into Germanic dialects that I mentioned in the video. But I went back and checked the source again, and I realized that the dictionary entry I was reading was for the PREFIX "in－", not the standalone word. The standalone word has always existed in the Germanic language family. And ultimately, both the Germanic and Latin words come from the Proto-Indo-European word "en".

[@notonlysunandbeach2567]

...and "en" is used in spanish for the same purposes, but sometimes with modifications.

[@Thomas-er8xg]

In is Latin: "Iulius est in tablinum" - "Julius is in the study"

[@dfjl2204]

thanks! i love to be right lol

[@axelpalmer6451]

Actually, "tablinum" should take the ablative "tablino" here.

[@user-pd6bd7ir4z]

Thanks Paul, yeah I did find it strange when you said this simple preposition was of Latin origin as these basic words are almost entirely of Germanic /OldEnglish origin.

[@edule1]

My first language is Spanish and I'm very well fluent in english. I learnt English since I was like 6 years old and NEVER in my life have I thought of it as a romance language.

[@siriemapantanal6894]

Because you are ignorant. If you speak English and Spanish you can easily identify the Latin words in this language. example: the word street which is a corruption of STRATA in Latin. Note the radical STR in both words. Another: father which in Latin is PATER - mother which in Latin is MATER - six (the number) which in Latin is SEX - seven (the number) which in latin is SEPTEM - number wich in Latin is NUMERUS and thousands of others. If you never realised that you should go back to school or maybe Spanish is not so Latin like everybody says.

[@soundautomatic1]

Do you live in Texas? You said learnt.

[@edule1]

@@siriemapantanal6894 You're failing to understand that just because you can distinguish the latin originated words in English that doesn't make it a latin language. English may have latin vocabulary but it does not have a latin structure. Other example of this would be spanish, which has a lot of words that are arabic and date from the arab conquest of Spain, but it is preposterous to say Spanish is an arab language. Same deal with saying English is a romance language.

[@edule1]

@@soundautomatic1 No, I'm from Mexico. My state (Chihuahua) shares the border with Texas tho haha so that may be the thing

[@siriemapantanal6894]

@@edule1 Excuse me. Latin language is only Latin. All other Western European languages including here the English and the German which also has strong influence of the classic Latin in the vocabulary and also in the grammar with those complicated declination are languages with local dialects with elements of Latin, nothing more than that. Portuguese language has origin in Celtic and Lusitanian dialects with elements of Latin, Spanish language should be local dialects spoken before the Roman occupation with elements of Latin, French language is local dialects with elements of Latin, German language is Germanic dialects with elements of Latin, English language is Celtic and other local dialects with elements of Latin, etc .... Now tell this English Educator that he is wrong. " INUK LEE | CERTIFIED EDUCATOR About 70% of our english words come from Latin. This alone make Latin the most important language to influence English. For example, the word, promise, comes from "pro-mitto," meaning to send before. Here are some more examples: word = verbum; canine = canis; college =collegium. I think you get the picture. Also Latin has influenced our grammar. For example, the distinction between "I" and "me" is based on cases. I equals nominative case in Latin and me equals dative, ablative and accusative cases. Even little things like the improper use of split infinitives come from Latin, since in Latin infinitives cannot be split. For example, to love is amare (one word) in Latin. So, in short, Latin continues to play a huge role."

[@Astral_Wave]

Clearly and unmistakably a Germanic language through and through. Partially creole? I would say yes as well. The heavy borrowing from Romance aside, I believe it would've been inevitable that English's grammar would've simplified to accommodate the perpetual interactions with various other languages 🤷‍♂️

[@SanadFeisal]

Interesting. I agree with what you've said @1:16, syntax and grammar is the key. Besides, it seems that the letter "n" at the end of many nouns, is used a lot in both languages (Eng. & Ger.). Syllabuses/ pronunciation of many words, seem to be common in both languages.

[@fromchomleystreet]

Even as a mono-lingual native English speaker, it is completely clear to me that English is much more closely related to German and Dutch than it is to any of the Romance languages. I don’t speak German, but I can understand bits of what a German speaker says simply because the English equivalent is so similar, both in vocabulary and structure. If I listen to a French speaker, I will recognise particular words that clearly share a Latin root (either via French or independently), but because the syntax is so completely different, as are all of the most basic, everyday words that do the bulk of the work in any language, I can make little sense of what is being said. German and Dutch just sound, to my mono-lingual ears, like different versions of the same language I speak. The Romance languages don’t.

[@LowbatmanGaming]

it’s not about listening in this case it’s about reading mainly, you’re not going to read the entire english lexicon in one conversation of course what english, german, and french as well as other romance languages are going to sound different because they evolved differently. There’s way more latin vocabulary in english by far though despite the grammatical structure being obviously germanic

[@fromchomleystreet]

@@LowbatmanGaming There’re numerically more words of Latin origin than Germanic in the entirety of the English vocabulary, that’s true. But the crucial point is what KINDS of words they are. Latin and Greek dominate science and technology words, words related to prestigious pursuits. But the most commonly used words - words like “and” and “the” and the words for common, everyday things, words that will be used in every conversation, are overwhelmingly Germanic. So while there are more words in English that have non-Germanic origins, any English speaker will spend more of their lifetime speaking a Germanic word than they will spend speaking a Latin word.

[@LowbatmanGaming]

@@fromchomleystreet Bring up an original argument, im not arguing that english is a latin language, just has more latin influence by far and the only reason people say more germanic words is because of grammar and language and the fact that the most common words of a language are usually grammatical words such as prepositions. But i don’t disagree with what you’re saying

[@LowbatmanGaming]

latin and greek don’t dominate science and technology they dominate virtually everything that isn’t grammatical, which is why i said it’s more about reading, and with context you’ll see that most complex multisyllable words are latin and greek, as well as prefixes and suffixes. Yes most people are going to mainly speak germanic words because they’re common, but to even express anything with meaning it requires you to use a word with latin/greek (french) origin and that’s a fact. English is a Germanic language for that reason and that reason only. if the grammatical structure weren’t germanic it would be a romance language for sure, despite there still being around 20-30% of the words with germanic origin. it’s how humans classify languages

[@LowbatmanGaming]

@@fromchomleystreet so basically we are saying the same thing lol, except i disagree with your first original comment. i don’t think it would be easier for an english speaker to understand german vs a romance language like spanish italian portuguese even french despite the accent the very point you brought up about the latin roots of words is the reason why that is yes the grammatical structure is similar in german but to understand someone the words in sentences don’t have to be in order so as long as they’re there so IMO an english speaker should understand another romance language better than a germanic language especially with the accent as well. Other than that i agree with you

[@mrmiskeen8284]

Comparison : Eng. : The water is too hot. Ger. : Das Wasser ist zu heiß. Dut. : Het Water is te heet. W. Fri. : It wetter is te hyt. Afr. : Die water is te warm. Ger. : Der Mann war laut am lachen. Eng. : The man was laughing out loud. Dut. : De man lachte hardop. W. Fri. : De man lake lûd. Afr. : Die man lag hardop. Ger. : Der Preis war gut für diese Qualitäten. Eng. : The price was good for these qualities. Dut. : De prijs was goed voor deze kwaliteiten. W. Fri. : De priis wie goed foar dizze kwaliteiten. Afr. : Die prys was goed vir hierdie eienskappe. English is in its simple structure germanic, in simple sentences and in simple daily vocabulary. In the synthax as well. But long periods of occupation by the French and Romans changed the charakteristics of the old english language. But for me it is a germanic language.

[@garmit61]

Old English didn’t exist when the Romans were here. The indigenous population spoke a Celtic language then. The Saxons arrived after the Roman Empire collapsed and brought a Germanic language. The normans arrived much later and the fusion of Saxon Germanic and Norman French started the English language.

[@andreraphael6727]

"Price" and "qualities" are latin words. See: "pretium" and "qualitas".

[@user-yz6ms5mp5i]

Occupation sounds twice funnier if get some attention, that english became the main language in Scotland, Wales and Ireland by real occupation. And saxons invaded Britain after Rome leaving.

[@user-yz6ms5mp5i]

And it was not an occupation. It was conquest, because if we prolong this logic we can say that saxons are occupants

[@korssar]

@@andreraphael6727 el precio es bueno para esa calidad (español)

[@glenngilbert7389]

An excellent presentation. In my experience as an L1 English speaker who has learned both Italin and German, I can say that despite the fact that German has 'more' grammar than English, syntax became more logical to me earlier in the learning process and I progressed much faster, whereas Italian has always been a struggle because it doesn't fall into place so easily

[@GoodPersonTestWebsite]

Thank you - this addressed and answered my questions in a straight forward way.

[@rainerbuesching1]

Being a German, to learn English is quite easy as the structure of the sentences and most words look familiar. Ok, there are always some roman words like "interesting" (German also adopted "interessant") or "complete"; German adopted "komplett". But just look at the basic words: glass = Glas, grass = Gras, foot = Fuß, finger = Finger, arm = Arm, the = der/die, is = ist, cat = Katze, that = das, had = hatte, and = und, me = mich, my = mein, word = Wort, think = denken, from German "ting", most = meist, hand = Hand, knee = Knie.

[@ryan7864]

That still does not account for a vast amount of common Latin words used in English everyday

[@rainerbuesching1]

It's the Romans to blame for that ;-)

[@jimcrawford5039]

I agree with you Rainer, English certainly is a Germanic language, we can understand a lot of words in Deutsch and even sentences.

[@clivegoodman16]

@@ryan7864. England was conquered by the French speaking William Duke of Normandy. One of his policies to make a three language policy. The most prestigious language was Latin, the language of the Church and administration. Then there was French (a Romance language) which was the language of the King and aristocracy. However the vast magority of people continued to speak various dialects of old English. It is possible that English might have died out but due various historical processes, such the Hundred year war and the black death a combined language developed, English at its base but with plenty of words of French origin. This is now known as Middle English. Middle English eventually developed into early modern English, (Shakespearean English and the English of the KJV) and then intp Modern English. During this period words were added to English from Latin as they had more prestige than native English words. An example occurred when the works of Sigmund Freud were translated. Freud wrote in German and used basic German pronouns to name the parts of the personality. However when these were translated into English, the pronouns were not translated into the corresponding English pronouns but into the corresppnding Latin pronouns, so 'Der Ich' became 'The Ego' rather than 'The I'.

[@AngelValis]

Strangely though, German isn't considered to be the fastest/easiest for English speakers to learn. The FSI (Foreign Service Institute) ranks languages on 4 tiers according to how long on average it takes their students to reach "professional working proficiency", 1 being fastest/easiest and 4 slowest/hardest. German (along with Hatian Creole, Malay, Indonesian, and Swahili) is in tier 2 (around 36 weeks / 900 hours). Tier 1 (24-30 weeks / 600-750 hours) is made up of about 50% Romance languages (the full list is: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish). www.state.gov/m/fsi/sls/c78549.htm Edited to add link.

[@Farid1213]

I'm french, and to me speaking about english as a romance language makes no sense because, it has developed from a germanic language, and when we take a look back to middle english and those previous varieties of english we can see how much german it was. But it is clear that a lot of vocabulary has entered the english language, it's a huge influence and it's part of the language history but it does not make english a romance language.

[@fitnessymas9605]

Antoine Farid I agree with you

[@gutsjoestar7450]

It's not but it seems to.

[@msn0525]

It's not a romance language but about 50-55% of it is. So it's more of a romance language than a Germanic language but because it has a lot of German sounding words and because it had a strong influence of German throuought history, it's classed as a German language. So this is why people think that English sounds like hissing-non angry German since it has a lot of "S" sounds and because it's a Latanized Germanic langauge basically.

[@Farid1213]

@@msn0525 yes but english grammar came from germanic.

[@msn0525]

@@Farid1213 yeah I know but alot of it is mixed

[@prashantmishra1994]

Hi Paul! I believe the English language is like an ocean of many languages.It's because,this beautiful language has adopted every language with its arms open.That's the most beautiful part of the English language. Thanks.

[@amyrae1087]

I agree with your conclusion. Thank you sir for an AWESOME presentation!

[@Nwk843]

Yes mate 😁🧉

[@TJODonnell]

When I (native American English speaker) lived in Germany, I was often mistaken for being Dutch, due to my accent. I took that as a compliment. I always found Dutch easier to understand if I listened/read with one ear/eye in English and the other ear/eye in German.

[@antonycharnock2993]

I always think Dutch English speakers sound American. I think its because they draw words out like Americans. I once got asked in Spain by an English speaking waiter where I was from as he didnt recognise my accent. I told him it was Northern English which is very Scandinavian influenced(Vikings & all that) He had learned English in Florida!

[@andreanicolepackard5147]

I took a couple years of German in high school - and the reason I chose it over French or Spanish was because of its similarity to English. I felt like I already halfway understood it.

[@georgilas]

Interestingly, your surname is Norman.

[@Ivanmaradonaaa]

Yeah I learned German thanks to my knowledge in English (Second language) extremely similar imo

[@marianarovoredo2059]

So you ended up limiting yourself to germanic languages.

[@thelegom7116]

@@marianarovoredo2059 not sure shes limiting herself lol she could know other languages

[@IM_AYKHARAAD]

The reason why Romance languages may seem difficult or challenging for English speakers is because the conjugation system and sometimes certain points of grammar are different from English (I wouldn’t say the problem of gender because some Germanic languages like German or Dutch have genders). But I feel like English and French (my mother language) share a lot of vocabulary and thus with the other Romance languages. I even think that learning English is useful if a native speaker of Chinese, Korean, Arabic or Russian want to learn French, for example (yeah, also because it shares the same alphabet and because English is the most learned language). So I’m a bit skeptical of saying that it’s easier to learn German, at least in terms of vocabulary. I studied a little bit of German at the university but I didn’t find it that similar. But I may be wrong...

[@bellevie.b]

I agree with you, it is a hybrid language which makes English easier to learn than German. As a native Spanish speaker, I always enjoy reading English texts with words that have Latin/French origin because they are easy to understand for me. There are many English words of Germanic origin that have helped me learn German ones. However, there are German words that only exist in that language for which I have no reference and have to learn "from scratch". Thank you for the video, very informative and educational.

[@berniecoombs]

From my own experience, I had a few lessons of German, and a several more lessons of Spanish, I also browsed some French literature as well, as I find that many of the words in English relate to all of these other languages I mentioned. This guy is right when he showed the differences between French and German, I do find French much easier to read than German. So, my conclusion is; English is a mixture of the two linguistic branches, Romance and Germanic.

[@AndrewCDiprose]

exactly. And I am a bilingual English Italian person

[@PierreMarkuse]

One of your most interesting videos! You should do more on the history of languages.

[@benseac]

I agree, Pierre. This was a very interesting video. The creole thing is something I've not thought of but the argument makes sense, though I don't agree with it.

[@Luka-wo6kh]

Agreed

[@alauracolling9107]

Yeah this was really Cool...

[@the1derpface]

Uh, how are you verified with one video and 11 subscribers?

[@AWWx2]

Yes, it would be great, especially for native or second language fluent speakers of English. English has such a long and rich, convoluted history of "evolving" into what we English native speakers use as our language today. The differences between Scottish or deep U.S. Southern accents are somewhat amazing, too. Native Scots or Irish speakers have no problem understanding people from Mississippi or Texas or Louisiana, but the reverse is not at all true. The history of English language dialects and accents, mostly developed over the last 4-5 centuries would be a ripe topic for discussion, too. As an American who speaks only two languages, (English first, French second), and dabbles in German, Spanish, Italian, with a smattering of understanding of Latin, I am pretty appreciative of all of Paul's vidoes. There are so many ways to approach and study English, both old and contemporary, probably the same for French, Spanish, Italian, and certainly Germanic and other language groups. Some interesting histories as people mix and mingle, trade and colonize, move on from one place to the next. Languages and their histories and word derivations can probably provide lots of clues about how we entered our present world with our current cultures and skills. Definitely worth more of a look. Thank you, Paul, your channel is a great service to all of us. I always look forward to learning from your videos.

[@hedgeclipper418]

I grew up speaking English and French, but I was always more comfortable in English. Apparently, as a child, I called English the "square" language, and complained that I couldn't get my tongue around the "round" one. Later in life, I started learning German, and I found that the logic clicked right away: German is "square" in the same way that English is, but in which romance languages are not. Despite all the common vocabulary between English and French, the logic is very different. German makes good sense to an English-headed person, whereas thoroughly French people seem to have more trouble with it. In this sense, I think English should be categorized as Germanic. The underlying logic is the same. And this is not just in the grammatical rules, but in the ways in which one would think to say something. When I try to think of a sentence in French, it often has proper grammar and syntax, but betrays my English way of thinking, whereas if I try to think of a sentence in German, the grammar and declension may not be perfect, but I will have said roughly the same thing a native German speaker would have thought to say.

[@chinoETS]

I feel similarly but with Spanish. I always feel like an imposter while speaking it -- like a spy in a movie who gives himself away with a phrase that's a little bit off. Maybe I should learn German!

[@pepitobenegas]

I'm a Spanish speaker and I find German easier in many ways than English, because German like Spanish has many strict rules and very few exceptions. For example English pronunciation and grammar is rather whimsical. It all depends on the origin of the word you are using or sometimes is just an idiomatic convention that just doesn't make sense with the rest of the Grammar. Spanish and German are not like that, they have rules and if you follow them, then you won't have problems. But in English you might be following all the rules and still making mistakes because you overlooked exceptions.

[@jiayilim1986]

Yep, but if you try and take on Japanese or Korean, that'll be another level of "my brain cannot relate to this ."

[@user-si3et2ig9x]

@@jiayilim1986 not really 😑 to be honest i never had contact with korean so i can't speak for it, but except for the writing "kanji" japanese and its grammer is as easy as fuck 😁😉

[@Bjowolf2]

You really should take a close look at the Scandinavian languages and be totally amazed by how many basic words - just somewhat distorted in some cases - you already "know" in advance as well as many parts of the fundamental grammatical structure ( a fairly simple grammar like that of English, but unlike German! 😁 ) , same basic word order, no cases for nouns and their articles, many parallel irregular verbs ( give / gav / givet) , tage / tog, taget (take /took / taken ), drik(ke) / drak / dukket, sværge [sveargh-e] / svor / svoret ( even "svoren" in dialects!), synge / sang / sunget, synke / sank / sunket etc.), verb conjugations that are the same for ALL grammatical persons ( English is nearly there now 😉 ) and - best of all! - NO backward sentences with the verb or verb compund at the end of a sentence - unlike in German and Dutch! As Scandinavians we feel the same way as you describe here - we feel at home straight away in English - almost as an expansion of our own languages, where we don't have to think very much most of the time - unlike with French & German ( even if we can recognise many basic words in G, but are often overwhelmed by their highly complex grammar ( like that of OE in many respects )). Hav en god dag [day(gh)], min frænd. 😊

[@milico2935]

As a portuguese, english and spanish speaker (C2, C1 and B2, respectfully), who's currently learning german, the way sentences are created in german seem very, very similar to english for me, even though the lack of gender and inflexion in english makes it way easier. On the other hand, I had and have a much easier time with the english vocab than with the german one, because even if the words dont always have the same roots as in portuguese, i can recognize suffixes and prefixes, and find similarity with more academic language in portuguese that hints the meaning pretty reliably. The same thing happens way less frequently in german, comparing to when i was just starting in english (how comfortable I am reading german texts 5 months into learning is about how I was in like 3 months into english, even though I am much more experienced in learning a language now). Great video as always

[@johncullen8100]

Paul, I enjoy your presentations very much, and I learn a lot. About your question: a professor long ago explained to me that, although more words are of Romance origin in English, the "spine" of English (often short monosyllables like go, come, kill, find, etc) are Germanic whereas the compound words (commiserate, perplexed, etc) tend to be Romance from Norman French and other sources. That has always made sense to me. However, it should be noted that both the Germanic and the Romance groups have a common origin in the Indo-European language family. Quick example: many of our body parts have names that are Germanic and simllar in both English and German (finger, elbow, shoulder, hand, arm...Finger, Ellbogen, Schulter, Hand, Arm...) HOWEVER what about Body... Koerper in German... and Head... Kopf in German (except the variant Haupt which is more closely related to English head). Koerper (with umlaut o) is from Latin corpus, while Kopf is from Latin Caput. So in the military, a "head man" in German is a Hauptmann, while in the French army they would be a Capitaine (same thing: head man) hence English Captain. Ultimately, in the background is the common Indo-European origin if I am not mistaken, so the Creole theory is (well, shrug!). Both language groups are more closely related than we tend to think. One final note... history is full ironies... one of the greatest being that the nation of France (Francia) is actually named after a Germanic nation (Franks). Pretty mind blowing, eh? JTC

[@chimanruler15]

Yes, English is Germanic. The core of the language is Germanic, with a lot of Latin and French words added.

[@VazquezAxel]

chimanruler15 I agree it’s like the Romanian language it’s latin but it has some slavic words thrown in there

[@agffans5725]

Poeple seem to forget that French Normandy was also invaded by Danish and Norwegian Vikings, just at it was the case with the Danish invasion of the Northern half of England, the Danelaw ... in fact, and ironically, the word law itself and the concept of a jury came to England with the pillaging Danish Vikings ...

[@RushfanUK]

AGF Fans, you are factually wrong Normandy developed as a region and the Normans as a distinct people from the interactions by Viking Settlers and the Frankish people, see Rollo the Viking.

[@agffans5725]

simgorm.... The Vikings did not go anywhere if it was not to invade and then settle, so if you think that they came to France and Normandy to go camping and to trade, then you have been lied to ... there is a lot of hearsay but very little actual facts and figures about Rollo, but he no doubt came to France to invade and pillage, most likey during the siege of Paris.

[@leneanderthalien]

yep' but the Viking language disapear close completly because the Viking adopt the french language...

[@helenbach1870]

It would have been a lot simpler if the Babylonians hadn’t built that bloody tower!

[@protokhaniapetos3158]

Helen Bach ikr? That dang Nimrod!

[@theflammiferofwesternesse6122]

Bloody Babylonians, right!?

[@tanzanos]

LOL!

[@mithrasenkidu9423]

That's just mythology!

[@boondocks8002]

@@pbmltd9023 ...Well said

[@migueldeleon6677]

I stumbled on this just now, and find it very well done. As to my opinion, I had just finished listening to another video with Old English pronunciation, and it SOUNDS extremely Germanic. So no matter what English may be on paper, in speech it sounds as though it comes from Germanic sources.

[@RKFr071]

It's quite interesting as a french person to observe that when it comes to check the synonyms of an informal word it tends to be like a french word in its formal form. For example, see and observe. In french the equivalents are voir and observer. Show and demonstrate are montrer and démontrer. Talk and declare or announce are parler and déclarer or annoncer. Etc...

[@facundocorradini]

Old English looks much more Germanic than the modern version.

[@antigen4]

shakespearean era (tudor era) english used german word order too .... i.e. 'what didst thou, in thy mind, have?' - look at DIDST alone even - if that ain't german - i don't know what is ...

[@jimsmith2902]

antigen4: I agree with you 100% that English is a Germanic language and, yes, that 2nd person singular ending '-est', or 'st' is a feature of German as well as English (even if it archaic now). But I think you have to be a bit careful about word order; Shakespeare is a poet and poets sometimes deviate from "standard" word order for reasons of metre or rhyme. That separation of auxiliary verb and infinitive that you highlight may occur occasionally in Shakespeare, but it's not the norm; nine times out of ten he would have written "what did'st thou have in mind".

[@jimsmith2902]

Ata, I don't think many Germans would agree with you :-) But, of course, German and old English are related languages for sure.

[@KezanzatheGreat]

+Mr Kebab No no no, you've got it all wrong. Saying English is German is like saying Spanish is Italian because it's a Romance language - which, while it is a Romance language, it is not at all Italian. English is GermanIC - note the -ic there. That doesn't mean it's German, it means it's part of the Germanic language family, along with Dutch, Norse, German and some others. Note that while these languages are referred to as Germanic languages, they are in fact NOT referred to as German unless the language referred to IS the German language - they are referred to as Germanic. It's like referring to a Romance language as Latin because it's Romance. That doesn't work because Latin is a language that is part of the family, not the family itself, despite it being the original member. Does that clarify things?

[@KezanzatheGreat]

+Mr Kebab Also, ad hominems are a poor choice of argument; they don't further your argument at all and simply serve to convince one and all not to listen to you because you have nothing worthwhile to say. Offending people is not constructive when it comes to argument. All right?

[@MasiukA]

English is basically a Germanic language with Germanic fundamentals, but with a ton of Romance influence in the vocabulary. You're essentially right in calling it a hybrid, but I also see the logic in why it's technically a Germanic language.

[@dimensiondoor2738]

"Yes, that's exactly what makes English Germanic." German sentence sounds like this: "Yes, exactly that makes English Germanic"

[@KezanzatheGreat]

Ja, das ist was Englisch germanisch macht! (Actual German translation of "Yes, that's what makes English Germanic!") Now let's go to the perfect tense. Ich habe Deutsch gelernt! Doesn't that look an awful lot like 'I have German learned'? Because, translated literally, that's exactly what it means. Then there's the German praeteritum - haha, Latin word - 'Ich lernte Deutsch.' Doesn't that look remarkably like 'I learned German'? Because that's exactly what it means. It's not necessarily obvious, but there are still those connections to the Germanic family here and there. Especially when I'm sitting here reading Canterbury Tales in Middle English and finding what closely resembles German - modern German - sentence structure. Other than that, you probably haven't looked at Old English and realized that it looks remarkably like Old Norse. Which is Germanic. And if you've read it, you'd find (provided you know German, which I'm assuming you do) that there are words in Old English which are present in modern-day German, and which are related. Coincidence? Maybe, but highly doubtful.

[@KezanzatheGreat]

+Ken Hudson So people keep saying. But if you think about it in terms of modern languages only, then English really isn't related to any language at all except to languages that are long dead. And since dead languages are all we've got, that's all we can use. It's essentially a linguistic family tree. Verstehst du jetzt?

[@mancubwwa]

@kenzanza the Great - from what I know English is actually quite related to Frisian. And in many ways it is simmilar tu Dutch as well, much moreso than to German. So not only to dead languages

[@KezanzatheGreat]

+mancubwwa This is true, it is, but I like to compare English to modern German because one, it's what I'm familiar with and two, Modern German actually bears more of a resemblance to Old English than New English does. Some of the forms of the verb 'to be' are the same in Old English and Modern German. There are other similarities as well, but that’s one of them.

[@andreaevans5325]

This was super interesting! Thank you!

[@charlieshaw-pentek6037]

I was practically under the illusion for most of my life that English was a romance before i even knew anything about languages, because I was told in school that English comes from Latin, which i think is a very common misconception. It's obvious to me that English is a Germanic language, the cause of the confusion is that the similarities to romance languages are more immediately obvious to people who don't know what to look for when spotting similarities in languages. English, Spanish and French would only be similar when looking at the words they have that come from Latin, words like Hospital (English/Spanish) and Hôpital (French), compared to Krankenhaus (German), it might seem based on those words that English is more similar to Spanish and French than German, leading to the conclusion that it might be a Romance Language. However, when u look at the fundamental pillars of those languages and the linguistic rules, u start to see that English is actually more like German than Spanish and French, and obviously English and German are both descended from Proto-Germanic, whereas Spanish and French are descended from Latin, English only sounds so much like Spanish and French because it has so much Latin influence, and French also has a lot od Germanic influence and English has a lot of French influence and to further add to this, all of thise languages are Indo-European, so they're bound to have some similarities along the way, but that doesn't change the fact that English is 100% a Germanic language

[@jandron94]

The basic grammar words and vocabulary are predominantly Germanic. But do you want to make do with only 500 words ? As you expand your vocabulary you will realize that French and Latin become more and more important. Just with your commant you could classify your words in each category : Germanic or French/Latin ? I don't have time but I propose you do. Just for a start: GERMANIC: I, was, under, the, for, most, of, my, life, that, English, a, before, even, knew, anything, about FRENCH/LATIN: practically, illusion, Romance, language A language is whole : you need the grammar structure, the vocabulary, everything ! Also as an exercise you could translate your comment in German and French and see which translation retains the most original text (single occurences, not the 20 "the", "in" etc.).

[@pepe7044]

The influence is still pretty big, considering that there are more latin words, mostly used in advanced/fancy english, but nonetheless words than original anglo saxon

[@ronriesinger7755]

Definitely Germanic. Very few Europeans would think of English as a Romance language.

[@braschigiovanniangelo5559]

@49jubilee ''gotten'' is germanic, i see....

[@curtisderbyshire1541]

@49jubilee The Frank's are German and they developed French since they are also native to Nomideia of France, the invaders are not native, Europe has been cucked, sold,enslaved, invaded and betrayed many times especially by the EU started by Kalergi whom hates the native Europeans and started the WWs with the Windrush

[@irgendwer3610]

@@curtisderbyshire1541 the Franks were not German, they were, well... Franks. The closest thing to the Frankish language today is dutch. The Franks did not develop French, Medieval Latin was the language spoken in Gallia (modern day France), when the Franks conquered Gallia they influenced the local Latin dialects a bit, but once the Frankish empire fell the lingua franca became Gallo-Romance which would later split into French and Occitan. The reason why this dialect of Medieval Latin is named after the Franks is because the latin speaking people under Charlemagne adopted the identity, in the same way that the greeks called themselves romans way after the roman empire had collapsed. The Franks were also not native to France, they migrated to France during the Migration Period

[@michaelsommers2356]

@49jubilee _"Its a marriage of both English has gotten words from French"_ By that criterion, Japanese is Germanic, since it has taken lots of words from English.

[@ganzlustig9754]

English is the FUSION of German and French!

[@ezequielgerstelbodoha9492]

I've learned german after learning english, and I can confirm that in the practice, you can notice that both are germanic, the structures but also the vocabulary. Also it is easier for germans to learn english as for an spanish native speaker

[@danielelliott95]

Absolutely this. Once you get more into other Germanic languages you can see why it’s still classified as Germanic. I also have been learning German and they sound so much alike in their structure. It’s truly fun to experience.

[@7MPhonemicEnglish]

I would guess that along with the importation of words from other languages, also comes the importation of some additional speech sounds, which can be a good thing since it enables the coinage of many new words based on a wider variety of options.

[@RivkahSong]

It's always so interesting to me to study history and see how events that happened centuries ago still influence us today even without knowing we're being affected. In the 11th century a man named William left his home in Normandy, conquered all of England, and declared himself king. He brought with him his French language and his loyal compatriots whom he made the landed aristocracy. This started a 300 year tradition of speaking French in the royal court. But even now, centuries on and in lands far away from England and France, anytime an English speaker wants to sound formal, business-like, educated, or rich they default to French (and latin) based words. Simply incredible.

[@WildStar2002]

English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages & rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary. I love that English borrows from so many languages!

[@dannhymir9678]

Lol. That *metaphor* was *quixotic* but spot on.

[@WildStar2002]

@DM Sullivan I saw it as a meme and loved it! The original quote is attributed to "James Nicoll" circa 1990.

[@motogee3796]

Lol. English sounds more akin to German without any of the French pretense or Italian inflection or Spanish lisp. English sounds commanding, clear and sharp...

[@cmdfarsight]

I'm sure that is a quote from Terry pratchett's books.

[@MaxTalbot69]

@@cmdfarsight Mark Twain.

[@marsgal42]

Germanic. The "nuts and bolts" of English - base vocabulary, functional words, and so on - are Germanic. While modern English grammar is much simpler than old English, the North Germanic languages have undergone similar changes, as has Dutch. English with only Germanic words can have a powerful effect. Look up Churchill's "We shall fight them on the beaches" speech for a famous example.

[@AudieHolland]

Churchill never said "them."

[@thejompi]

I do agree its Germanic, but words/lexicon/vocabulary are not the definitive markers for designating it as Germanic rather it's syntactic properties and morphological properties provide a better overview of a language since they're the underlying structures of a language. Vocabulary/lexicon are just the whip cream of the language. Just the tip of the Linguistic iceberg.

[@MichaelFay63]

He had a voice copier who read out speeches imitating him. Since he was usually too deep into the old Brandy. Which gave him his famous slur!

[@Bjowolf2]

Precisely - thank you. Many simple sentences in Scandinavian - especially in Danish - will often look to an E speaking person like some strange version of Pseudo Middle English because of the many similar words, word order, use of verbs and tenses ( incl. many irregular verbs! ) and the lack of cases in nouns and their articles - especially once you start to see past our peculiar spelling traditions. Skal vi gå [go] hjem [ yem ] nu [noo]? ( Swe. hem ) Vil du (thou) synge en sang for mig [migh ]? Lad os [us] begynde med (OE mid = with ) dem - vi kan finde ham efter middag. etc.

[@MichaelFay63]

Not failed Capitalism has run it's course and is in the swamp. The military are hoping for a war against China Russia and Iran to pull themselves out the bog but they will lose and the world will need the working class to lead. Read "The World Socialist Website" for a fuller explanation!

[@curtpiazza1688]

Wow....great lesson! Thanx so much!

[@fahimhyder4738]

I thank you Brother Paul, your video is enlightening. I have learned much from your video. I think English is a Germanic language inspite of influences from other languages. I thank you so much my Brother Paul for sharing your knowledge with us. Take care Brother Paul.

[@patrickhodson8715]

I'd love to see a video about how Greek progressed from Ancient, to Classical, to Koine/Hellenistic, to Modern Greek.

[@geronico11]

yes he hasnt done vid abt Greek. As I know the attic/ionian turned to be the Koine (common) after Alexander's conquests, which led to Byzantine wihich led to the modern Greek

[@patrickhodson8715]

Byzantine!! I knew I was forgetting one, haha! I'm currently studying koine by myself in my spare time. I'd love to see a video about how it fits within the context of the language's history.

[@geronico11]

Im Greek I think koine is not so exciting as the classical ones (aeolic/ionic/doric) that had some interesting differences (pronunciation etc)

[@patrickhodson8715]

True. I'm mostly learning it because it's somewhat of a middle-of-the-ground between ancient and modern, and because it's what the New Testament of the bible was written in. Also because of that, there are lots of resources on koine specifically. I suppose my comment should have said "I'd love to see a video of the history of the language, so that I can better see how koine fits in context."

[@DadoSimicStudiostriver]

No,those are totally separate cultures.Byzantine Empire was called second Roman Empire.There live many cultures and nations.Romans,Greeks,Macedonians and many other middle east countries and some were even Slavs.You have to take Ortodox Christianity and they would call you a Roman even thou nationalities vary.

[@joseadriangarciasanchez2932]

A very good video indeed, congratulations. As well, a very good explanation. I agree with the creole theory, since I studied it while studying English philology at university. My mother tongue is Spanish, and, to be honest, English doesn't sound Romance to me at all. However, Italian, Portuguese, French (in some extent), Galician, Catalan, etc, do sound Romance to me. Furthermore, I do understand what I read in those languages, and, depending on the situation and context, I can also understand those languages spoken. I also had to study Old and Middle English (very hard indeed), and because of that I see the Germanic root of English. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that it has a huge percentage of Latin and French words, it is due to the common past those languages shared. It also happened to Spanish, we have a lot of French and Arabic words. This is the amazing world of languages.

[@RealistReviewer]

It's Pig latin and Germanic, similarities to Romance languages is because they where influenced by Latin as well.

[@Ezullof]

Pig latin means words that are completely made up to look like latin. Like : Specho latinus vere vellum. I think you mean "vulgar" latin, which is also false, since english has words from scholarly latin, scholarly french (reconstructed from latin roots) and common french (evolved from latin and vulgar latin).

[@r1a1p1AllenPogue]

Re: "doesn't sound Romance to me at all." I have a Spanish friend that once told me that before he gained proficiency in English he could not distinguish it from Danish or the other Scandinavian languages. They all sounded the same to him, but that he could distinguish the languages of northern Europe from French or Italian. Interesting that you have a similar observation.

[@casrvsfv3172]

Allen Pogue yes, I'm from Spain too and I think most Spaniards would understand Italian easily. Others like Portuguese and French would be very easy too in the written form. But English definitely sounds like a mixture of the Scandinavians and Dutch to me, nothing close to Spanish. Also if you get to speak English and a Romance you can easily see grammar is very different.

[@Elias58731]

es muy interesante lo que dices, solo agregaría que el castellano es un idioma mucho menos híbrido que el inglés, ya que si mal no me equivoco aprox. un 90 por ciento del vocabulario del castellano es de origen latino, el resto se divide entre palabras de origen celta, frances, arabe, griego,etc. saludos

[@josephstevano5905]

Excellent presentation!

[@RackalackDinner]

Wonderful video, loved it. Just a note, I was wearing headphones and the music was quite loud and distracting by the end of the video

[@irbis_rosh]

It's good to remember that the more casual English becomes the more 'Germanic' it usually gets. I think that's because of the social stratification. The common folk spoke a more natural to them Germanic language whereas the lords and upper classes had heavy exposure the the Romance languages (being the languages of liturgy, art and science). After the standardization that usually came with mass media (in this case the printed books), the language began to 'level out' and was exposed to the generations of people via dissemination.

[@ogniankamenov481]

Middle French was the language of the elite (French-speaking Danish Normands)

[@alaric49]

Interesting post. Thanks

[@lissandrafreljord7913]

I feel like English and French are both the black sheep of their respective language family. English and French pronunciation rules are not necessarily phonetic, and it is much more flowy and soft than articulated and strong like Italian and German. Not to mention, I believe they both may have some Celtic influence. It's like this, I'm pretty sure a Spanish, an Italian, and a Portuguese will understand each other better than a French when speaking, and same with a German and Dutch than an English.

[@Mercure250]

The only reason the writings are not phonetic is because none of the languages went through a strong enough spelling reform. It's true though that both languages changed drastically from their origins. Buuut...German did too, tbh. And Portuguese too, if I'm not mistaken.

[@krim7]

The closest English has come to a spelling reform is when Webster did it (which is why we have British and American English). However, I would argue that Webster was not ambitious enough. Not like the people who standardized other European languages in the late 1800's

[@jamesdinkelmann8704]

Lissandra Freljord I believe that honey

[@erwannleligerien3771]

There are celtics words in French (the words with the syllable "au").

[@EvilFookaire]

Some Gailic/Celtic was also mutually intelligable with old Germanic and Norse languages. Almost as if those tribes didn't just interact with their own, and as if there might have been other languages before Latin/German/Celtic families... :p (there were others that sometimes even threw a common ancestry into different languagge families but don't throw out everything that you've learnt just yet - languages and language families are quite organic, and tend to be prone to some muddying-up along the way as people plod through history)

[@pwoody9416]

I had never heard the creole hypothesis before. Interesting. I do like the linguistic definition/approach and consider it Germanic, but altered to be amazingly flexible and able to include words from essentially all languages.

[@lyricist71]

I remember one of my teachers at school referring to the English language as a "bastard" (due to all the influences from German, Latin, French, Greek etc) and the parents were livid to say the least.

[@notchomsky1234]

Great presentation. You are getting better at this. You made so many great points, that I thirst for more in depth comparisons between the inventory of allowed sounds in each language and all that borrowing of words. For example, do the sounds follow the words into a new language or does the language that accepts these new words filter them by acceptance sound rules? If so, then how does each rule work? In other words, is English spoken with a germanic sound system or Latin or what? Or maybe English is spoken with some sort of mix.

[@lidixakmartine3201]

It definitely has a simplified Germanic core with a lot of Romance attachments.

[@gopinathanp607]

Yes sir,that was why two world wars were fought-for it was rather an infight...

[@clotildedecasaantici8065]

I am Italian .yes.It's an absolutely germanic language with a latinized vocabulary.😊😊

[@aspectcommander7144]

Im Turk and there is the same words in each language: Kamera,Telefon,Akkordeon (Akordiyon almost same) ...

[@simonh6371]

@@aspectcommander7144 Yeah but those are words for more modern inventions which are derived from Latin or Greek anyway. Words that have been around thousands of years are very different e.g. apple, house, water, cow. Are they similar in Turkish? Of course they aren't.

[@schtreg9140]

@@simonh6371 I don't know if that was on purpose or on accident but all words you chose are of Germanic origin haha. Apfel, Haus, Wasser, Kuh.

[@simonh6371]

@@schtreg9140 Yes of course that was my whole point, they're even more similar in between England and Germany (in Netherlands and Flanders) - appel, huis, water, koe. People try to say English is a Latin language because there are Latin/French derived words for those or at least relating to them (except apple afaik) like residence/domicile, aquatic, bovine, but these are not really in everyday normal usage and are just alternatives to existing Germanic root words.

[@schtreg9140]

@@simonh6371 Gotcha, wasn't sure about your point at first but I 100% agree!

[@user-ut9zq1lw3x]

your conclusion is exactly what I thought (and I studied english language and literature for 6 years in Leiden and Chapel Hill, USA)

[@casinoheimdall9328]

English sounds like "a drunk Frisian trying to speak French"

[@016329]

There's really no debate - English is obviously Germanic. The grammar, pronunciation and core vocabulary are Germanic. The clearest illustration of this is that you can have an entire conversation using only Germanic words (even though it would obviously be awkward and sound forced) but you couldn't even form a simple sentence with no Germanic words. That says it all.

[@016329]

Oh also, "in" is Germanic but I think that's already been pointed out below haha ;)

[@MichaelFay63]

Was ist das was is das!

[@luckyluckydog123]

Pronunciation: that's an important aspect which was not mentioned in the video and, as you say, English is clearly Germanic and not Romance in this respect

[@brauneskamo5974]

While I agree that English is still a Germanic language, I think that pronunciation is not necessarily a determinant in that classification. French, for instance, is very much a Romance language despite having a very "Germanic" phonology.

[@MichaelFay63]

I think in 50 years Esperanto or a similar artificial easy peasy language to communicate with so we can all yak off on the computer!

[@richardthomas905]

I always thought of English as a Germanic language with heavy Latin and French influences

[@richardthomas905]

The French part of course most notably coming from the fact the island was controlled by Normans for a period of time.

[@MichaelFay63]

The story goes that by 1300 or so when the Normans went to France they laughed at their old fashioned French. They swallowed the pip and started speaking English!

[@Asher-Tzvi]

0:35 The German has a more English feeling to it. Like just the way it's written and how the words are. It feels more familiar. But I can definitely understand the French more, but I think that's only because I've studied a little of it, as well as Latin in high school.

[@Stoirelius]

I am Brazilian, which means I speak Portuguese natively. I also speak English fluently. I have watched both French and German movies and tv series. I couldn’t understand anything of the French ones, even though I speak a romance language. However, I could understand some bits here and there of the German ones, because of my English knowledge.

[@gordonchild273]

LoL Brazilian can't even understand potugues from Portugal, so understand German..., sorry i don't trust you

[@Stoirelius]

@@gordonchild273 Oh no… I am going to have to rethink my whole life because you don’t trust me. You just shattered all my dreams. What am I going to do now? I feel lost.

[@gordonchild273]

@@Stoirelius Just stop lying pepito and your whole life will be better... you will still dream even in German

[@Stoirelius]

@@gordonchild273 I have work to do kid, bye.

[@zaqwsx23]

The Romance languages are much more similar to each other than the Germanic languages. Your subjective experience is misleading. French has a particular pronunciation. Italian and Spanish would be much more familiar to you.

[@NoHealerJustPain]

I still stick to the idea to regard English as Germanic language. What is my arguments? 1) In fact it's very close to Dutch, or even closer to Frisian. 2) French itself is a complex language with Franconian, Latin and some Celtic roots. 3) Many other non-romance languages still have a bunch of Greco-Latin lexicon. 4) Most of West Europe languages were simplified too, more or less.

[@richamo13]

I'm Dutch and I am learning Norwegian at the moment, but I noticed that Norwegian is way more similar to English in grammatical perspectives than Dutch is. Of course that is an extra argument, since Norwegian is also a germanic language.

[@SeverMetal]

Agreed. I think Paul especially should have taken point 3 into consideration.

[@Huyedelomalo]

English is a Germanic language that never had it's national revival. Compare to German!

[@croja07]

I agree, after starting to learn Norwegian then switching to Swedish, I was pleasantly surprised as to how similar they are to English

[@Jupiter__001_]

+R Mous That may be due to the Scandinavian and Danish invaders and those who stayed and married into English families.

[@nickindevon]

Young children speak mainly Germanic English, then as older children and adults we tend to move towards Romance English.

[@changthunderwang7543]

Likewise I think the British speak more Germanic English while Americans speak more Romance English

[@Regular_Decorated_Emergency]

@@changthunderwang7543 That is false. British English uses much more Latin words and follows much more French spelling. British: corridor American: hallway British: colour American: color The American dialect isn’t the “simplified” form of the British dialect as people will tell you, but rather ironically more true to English’s Germanic roots.

[@johngosling1]

We have to remember that English as spoken in the 21st century, and probably also for the last thousand years, is not one language but two: the 'educated' language and the 'common' language. This is not simply a distinction between the speech of different people, educated vs less educated, but between the circumstances in which we are using the language. Sometimes we use the 'educated' form and sometimes we used the common form, depending on whom are addressing and the subject matter in question. So for example, when I am speaking to professional colleagues about some technical issue in my field, then I will tend to use the 'educated' form of the language, which happens to be largely romance/latin-based. On the other hand, when watching a football match or having fun with friends or in the middle of an altercation in the street I am much more likely to use the Germanic vocabulary. In Chaucer's time, the distinction would have been much more determined by social position - the aristocratic and mercantile classes using the language of their Norman rulers, and the peasant classes continuing to use the language of their Germanic forefathers.

[@goofygrandlouis6296]

true !

[@anon8740]

even in the more formal and "educated" version of English though, most of what we say is Germanic. Our articles, "a", "an", and "the", our pronouns, "you", "me", "I", "them", etc., other parts of basic language like "is", "but", "and", "or", and so on, it's everywhere, even if mixed in with more Latin words, it is always Germanic-based

[@vitaediscimus8932]

Ich finde Ihr Channel sehr informativ und hochwertig. Gratuliert!! 'Hoover' is a proper name - as the brand name of a vacuum cleaner manufacturer in the UK, now used in the UK as 'Vacuum cleaner'. Would this be a good case in point?

[@theTeslaFalcon]

You mostly ignored structure in this video. That is the most telling difference. The order of nouns, adjectives & verbs is night & day different between English vs Spanish & French. We borrowed French & Latin words, but we put them in a Germanic language structure. U analyzed the sentence vocab but ignored the structures.

[@jimsmith2902]

Tesla, Absolutely - you are 100% right.

[@Odinsday]

IAN WARD That isn’t always true tho. It happens a lot in German but in some sentences it doesn’t happen. Even if it does occur it isn’t impossible to understand. The way Yoda speaks is weird but not hard to understand.

[@Odinsday]

IAN WARD That isn’t always true tho. It happens a lot in German but in some sentences it doesn’t happen. Even if it does occur it isn’t impossible to understand. The way Yoda speaks is weird but not hard to understand.

[@jameswilkinson5323]

Tesla Falcon he mentioned the structure several times in comparison. It seems to be the main similarity.

[@KNadoli]

Exactly, the core structure of English is, has always been, and always be GERMANIC, not Romance. No matter how much influx Latin/French brought into English, general word formation and syntax never changed

[@seeingimages]

English is, with reference to genetics, a Germanic language that has picked up a huge number of loan words from Latin, French (with Latin origins), Greek, and other stuff.

[@siriemapantanal6894]

With five centuries of Roman colonisation before that Germanic tribe arrived in Britain and when they arrived they also were Romanised since Germania was also a Roman colony, you come here to say this language is a Germanic language? Many Germanic words in English are also Romanised words. That Germanic tribe invaded Britain after the Romans and before the Romans Celtic tribes inhabitated that Island. With almost 80% of the vocabulary composed of words of Latin origin it is a nonsense to say that trhis language is a Germanic language.

[@juanme555]

@@siriemapantanal6894 lol no, the vast majority of Germany never got latinized , Germania was a known understood region , Romans couldn't conquered because of Arminius. Germanics were like if the Native Americans beat the Spanish , they actually won and kept their trash culture. Britannia was by and large a shithole , Londonium was one of the weakest and poorest cities that the empire created and protected , the vast majority of Britanicus never spoke any type of Latin , they instead kept their Celtic aborigin languages until the Saxons came and well....Let's just say that the Germanic Saxons were a lot more serious about conquering those lands and also impose their culture on those aboriginal peoples , the tales of the castration brutality that went on in that island are as old as the name of england itself. You got the dates wrong, the Celtics inhabited the British Islands before the Germanics invaded , the Romans conquered first, were VERY hands off and careless about the island of Britannia , empire fell , Saxons from today's Lower Saxony State of Germany went to Britannia , conquered it , not one of those celtic barbarians spoke any type of Latin , and the Saxons simply replaced the culture...it is not clear if they replaced the genetics in the entire island , they certainly did in Londonium , but probably not all of Britannia , which they renamed as Angland (The Saxons did, not the Romans). You're delusional , the Romans saw the Celts in Britannia very much like an European would think of a Mexican today , they were very aboriginal (local-minded, small community minded, etc.) and very simple primitive people , very peaceful too , not many Britanic revolts against the empire, but they never latinized and were always seen as kind of a joke , also never became a problem because they obviously never migrated to Rome or Lyon or Cordoba , It was a bit of a pointless conquer if you ask me. But to say that Brits have ever had anything to do with Latin Culture is just silly , it's anti-history , the Afrikan Carthageans were far more Latinized than the Celts inhabiting the island of Britannia.

[@Boby9333]

@@siriemapantanal6894 English's structure is germanic with shit ton of french/latin words.

[@siriemapantanal6894]

@@Boby9333 I do not know what else I can show you people to prove that the English language was formed the same way as those you say "romance languages". "How did Latin become English? Latin has influenced the English language tremendously. Most of the influence, however, has been indirect. The indirect effect of Latin on English came mainly after the Normans invaded England in 1066. ... Latin also influenced Old English directly because of the Roman Conquest of England.Jan 19, 2021

[@Boby9333]

@@siriemapantanal6894 Yeah I know it has a lot of influence from French. Doesn't make it less Germanic... The grammar & syntax of English is from Germanic origin. Heck plenty showed that you can make day to day/basic sentences in English with little to no words of French/Latin/Greek origin. Those French/Latin/Greek words are mostly more scientific/sophisticated words. Eg: measurement/cooked animals/medical field term etc.

[@charleswarren1901]

Again, well done. My understanding of modern English is that it's a Teutonic language with Latin roots, that subsequent to the French Invasion of 1066, it incorporated some 10,000 French nouns--everything ending in "ion," for example. I get this from an old textbook.

[@byoobyoo1280]

I think spanish is the less complicated of all latin languages. And English is by far the easiest of all germanic languages grammatically but phonetically it can be difficult. English is my second language, native language is brazilian portuguese. And studying other languages is a hobby. Beautiful channel. 👏👏

[@jw-ws8dz]

Phonologically all the west germanic languages are a pain in the ass, although i’d say that english is still one of the harder ones in terms of pronunciation because the “th” sound is a very rare sound (and it’s so annoying that even native speakers don’t bother pronouncing it half of the time) and it’s excessive usage of diphthongs. Romance languages like spanish have much simpler pronunciation.

[@Dan-hispano.]

​​@@jw-ws8dz, en cuestiones de fonética el español es más sencillo que otras lenguas, el verdadero dolor de cabeza se llama "conjugación de verbos", incluso para mí que soy hispano a veces quedo loco con algunos verbos, v.g. cocer, roer, querer.

[@ANCalias]

French gramar is simplier

[@ANCalias]

They have a lot less conjugation

[@45thpaace]

I'm surprised you didn't mention the similarities between the words in german and english. Haus is house, Wasser is water, warm is warm, buch is book, bus is bus, wagon is wagon, gut is good, und is and etc. Much of the sentence structures are the same as well.

[@arvedludwig3584]

Fifteen in lower German, which almost died out, is foffteen.

[@kirab.5818]

As a German student of German and English at college I can tell you, that these two languages are in fact fairly closely related. I'm taking classes in Middle German this year and was surprised about how close. There even was a th sound in German hundreds of years ago. The S in Sie (which is the german formal 'you') was originally a th sound, so it was fairly identical to thy in older English. Our professors often tell us to think about what English word a Middle/Old German word remind us of to figure out what it means, because some Old/Middle German words are more similar to the Modern English equivalent. Even words like book (german Buch) and sweet (german süß) are directly related - even though it doesn't seem like that at first glance. That's due to multiple changes in sounds (e.g. the T at the end of sweet turned to a ß (spoken like the S in snake) in German while English kept the T). Also, Fun Fact: These sound changes also divided German and Dutch into two seperate languages, since Dutch also didn't go through those sound changes, just like English didn't (compare: eng. apple, dutch appel, ger. Apfel). However, most words that English deprived from French/Latin didn't change that much. Demande turned into demand, histoire into history, and so forth. Or they stayed exactly the same. So it's easy to say that English is more of a Romance language than a Germanic one, because it's more easy to identify as such. But just like it's shown in the video, most words that are used in casual conversations are actually of Germanic origin. Using Romance words showed some kind of prestige in the older days and they were at first mostly used by the royals and those of higher education/the upper class. It was a way to stand out from the ordinary people ('look at us, we can use all those fancy words you never even heard of, ha!') and to come off as sophisticated. That's also why formal English consists of mostly French/Latin words, while informal English doesn't. And especially the church strengthened the usage of Latin words, just like it did in other Germanic languages as well (e.g. family = german Familie, immigration = german Immigration). Nowadays, the English language is a mixture of Germanic and Romance vocabulary, but considering the origin I would definitely call it a Germanic language with Romance influences.

[@Bjowolf2]

The basic (simple) Danish ( & Norwegian & Swedish) words are usually closer to their English counterparts than the German ones are - becuse they didn't undergo the sound shifts that German did ( 2nd Germanic consonant shift ). D håbe [ho-be] / S hoppa(s) = hope vs. G hoffen D hade [hath-e] / S hata = hate vs. G hassen D give = give vs. G geben D skyde / S skjuta = shoot ( OE sceotan !) vs. G schießen D flyde / S flyta = float vs. G fließen D hæve / S häva = heave vs. G heben D leve / S leva = live = G leben etc.

[@cicerocivalecar7601]

Veritas!

[@Lagolop]

It sometimes amazes me how there are words in Yiddish (based on Medieval High German) contains the exact same old English words for certain things.

[@HonestSaxSound-unEdited-]

@Sredni Vashtar wrong! May be you don't know German.. if you fon't find tha similarity in a word, all you need is look for his sinonimous... and ok!

[@HonestSaxSound-unEdited-]

@@Bjowolf2 but, otherside, you can see hundred and hundred words with the same scripture, or the same pronounce between German and English, or very similar... or his sinonimous in deffect.

[@lisamariefan]

Wouldn't proper names cover a lot of units of measurement? Newtons, Volts, Amps, Ohms, Watts, Joules etc.? Also wouldn't something like Pasteurization also be from that since it's derived from Louis Pasteur? What about brand names like Ford?

[@VincentNganTK]

In addition to vocabulary and grammar, there are other characteristics of English that make it classified as a Germanic language. For example, English as with other Germanic languages is stress-timed but French and other Romance languages are syllable-timed.

[@ro_odge]

I heard that European Portuguese is stress-timed just like English