Is English Really a Germanic Language?

[@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.

[@Nostalgic_4_Disaster]

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.

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@いちごくん-l6d]

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.

[@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.

[@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)

[@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.

[@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

[@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

[@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

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@TheYopogo]

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

[@accountzofz]

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@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

[@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...

[@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)

[@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.

[@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

[@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".

[@ОленьТоповый]

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.

[@ОленьТоповый]

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)

[@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...

[@HweolRidda]

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]

@@HweolRidda 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...

[@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

[@求主指引]

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]

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

[@miguelm.a7462]

Not really, Art, Music, Humanity, Moral, liberty, glory, honor, loyalty, passion, vital

[@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

[@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

[@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."

[@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]

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

[@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

[@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).

[@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

[@Alden_Indoway]

⁠​⁠​⁠@@ANCalias French bière is a 16c. borrowing from German. However, the much earlier introduction into the Germanic languages is uncertain. Some speculate it may have come from Vulgar Latin biber (drink) or from Proto-Germanic root *beuwo- (barley) or from Germanic root *breura- (brew). Ale, however is indisputably Germanic. From Old English ealu (ale, beer) from Proto-Germanic *aluth-

[@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

[@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.

[@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

[@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

[@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!

[@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 ."

[@Ystrly]

@@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. 😊

[@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.

[@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!

[@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.

[@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

[@andreanicolepackard]

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...

[@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?

[@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.

[@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.

[@jamesmasters2386]

Man, this is exactly the conversation I tried to have with my "armchair historian” father last Christmas. He wouldn't have it. He insisted on the origin in proto-germanic roots is all you need to know about English to categories it. I will tactfully try and get this video in front of him this year. THANK YOU!!! just subscribed 😁

[@DoowopLover]

English has a very rich vocabulary, but the base of English is basically a Germanic language. In a simple every day conversation, around half the words we use are descended from Anglo-Saxon or Old English. The pronouns and conjunctions are descended from Anglo-Saxon. Yours, mine, ours....if,and,but. Do you notice how guttural these words are? Languages change and evolve over time. But the base of the language remains the same.

[@threeletteragent]

@Fact Checker German: Die besonderen Aspekte der intellektuellen Diskussion bestehen aus einer komplexen Struktur, die das Produkt von Generationen von Debatten und Vereinbarungen ist. French: Les aspects particuliers de la discussion intellectuelle consistent en une structure complexe qui est le produit de générations de débats et d'accords. Being a native English speaker (who also knows German, but for the purpose of this I'm analysing only the words that are similar to English and disregarding the words I understand but are not similar), I can say that in the case of this particular sentence, both languages are quite intelligible. However, the nouns are the only real cognates between English and French, everything else is quite different. Whereas in German, a lot of the small words that link together a sentence and allow it to function are cognates with English, and the nouns, verbs and adjectives tend to be unintelligible. Essentially, German and French are both similar to English, but in opposite areas.

[@JamesMartinelli-jr9mh]

Thot Police. none of 'the small words' in German am I able to comprehend.

[@DoowopLover]

@Fact Checker 29% of the words in modern English are of French origin, not two thirds.

[@DoowopLover]

@@JamesMartinelli-jr9mh I am able to comprehend. Others are able to comprehend. Granted, I can speak a little French, and a few words in Flemish and German.

[@profd65]

@Fact Checker Hey dummy, English vocabulary is less than one-third French, and most French (and Latin) words that have made their way into English are rarely or never used in ordinary conversations, however many of these words do show up in poems and novels. Meanwhile, German words are used CONSTANTLY by persons in every economic class and with every educational background, words like: think, is, can, house, come, hand, friend, cat, mouse, etc., etc., etc. The conversations of children are dominated by Germanic words, as are the conversations of really pissed-off people. And as someone who studied French for several years, I can tell you that a person knowing no French who looks at a page of French will be baffled (and he will be doubly baffled if you read him that page to him instead of showing it to him). He will have only the most vague and useless idea of what the text is about.

[@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?

[@Hainero2001]

The most interesting part to me is that the people who took French to England, the Normans, were in fact Germanic (Nordic) people themselves who had taken on the French language and many customs. Their forefathers spoke Old Norse. But wait, the plot thickens, because the Franks were also a Germanic people whose forefathers spoke a west Germanic language not dissimilar to OE, but who had taken on the languages of the Romans and the Gauls. So French, in 1066, would itself have been a bit of a hybrid language.

[@Mals001]

nop

[@terriblycharismaticduck2717]

A lot of “French” words that were borrowed into English are actually from Frankish. Even the word “French” is from Frankish.

[@Mals001]

Terribly Charismatic Duck yep but 80% of the french language is derived of the latin

[@MsBalter]

Hainero2001 awesome!

[@forestalfrank1074]

@Pâte Nouille: I don't think so and weren't it the Moors who invaded Spain? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moors

[@MrSleepyhead32]

I am a native English speaker that lives in an area with lots of Spanish and have been learning it. I also am learning Dutch. I feel my Spanish is better than my Dutch, but picking up Dutch has been much more intuitive. English is definitely germanic. The basic vocabulary and grammar is much closer to Dutch. Sometimes when I try to understand Dutch, sometimes I order my words in an archaic way and sometimes it is almost how Dutch is. Some nouns I have figured out because Dutch often has nouns literally formed by smashing words together. My favorites are "Woordenboek" - literally "Words book" or dictionary and "Stofzuigerslang" - literally "Dust sucker snake" or vacuum hose. Dutch forms similar word categories like English does. Latin words are also exaggerated by use. A lot of technical animal names have Latin words, but those are words we would never use in any practical everyday use.

[@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!

[@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!

[@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.

[@SalahPower]

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

[@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.

[@GB-ek2em]

I would like to add something : French does not completely results from latin. In fact, it's generally admitted that French language is 60 % of latin origin and 30 % from germanic origin or influence. So when you say that English language comes from 29 % french and 29 % latin would mean 58 % of roman language, I think it's quite overestimated : I would say 48 to 50 % of roman language influence. French is said to be the most germanic of latin origin languages. And English is the most latin of germanic languages.

[@noman4669]

Maybe it's the influence of Franks, a Germanic tribe.

[@Shocked-Face]

Which is why I find French much easier to understand than Italian or Spanish.

[@_zqn]

Italians and spanish can converse in their respective languages and understand them but not French.

[@MROEnglishLessons]

Actually no, French is likely 80-90% Latin Accept it, it's better!

[@Kanal7Indonesia]

french 💛 english

[@-VexyRS]

I would still consider English a Germanic language. I am Norwegian, so I might be biased here, but considering that most of the day-to-day words are Germanic, there's no denying its roots. As a language in the modern day, it is clearly a hybrid, but the language is Germanic by definition.

[@palepilgrim1174]

It's not even a hybrid, it's considered a West Germanic language by every academic in linguistics. It just has what I like to call 'the Latin Bloat'. Usually when you look up a Germanic word, it has about 20 Latin derived synonyms. All the technical, legal, scientific and pretentious words are dominated by Latin loans or Latin coinings as well. In some ways you could argue there are 2 English languages, the common English language (which is overwhelmingly Germanic) and the... academic or intellectual English language (which is a hybrid Germanic-Romance in terms of vocabulary). Also what this guy in the video fails to mention is that a lot of the French derived words are actually from Proto-Germanic themselves, here's some examples of French derived loanwords in English of ultimate Germanic origin: - guard - garden - abandon - roast - banner - dungeon A significant percentage of the French loanwords in English were actually Frankish loanwords into Norman French themselves before being loaned into English.

[@dord9]

Pale Pilgrim Very true. It is said that roughly 10% of all French vocabulary has Frankish origin. In fact, the Frankish people is where France gets its name.

[@_zqn]

Plus the names. A lot of french names are germanic like Hubert, Bernard, Raymond, Édouard...

[@chancellorpalpatineakathes6130]

Le Wendigo sane could be said of Spanish. Humberto, Bernardo, Reymundo, Eduardo. English by sound is German but for all intents and purposes it’s Latin. Coming from a non European culture I see all languages west of the Rhine as basically similar with French having an annoying sound that’s difficult to learn.

[@peerjohansen3817]

You're not biased, I'm portuguese and y'all can keep English with you

[@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").

[@sarahk2722]

When I compare modern English to modern German with a free translation, German just looks like a really old way to structure English sentences. I think English is Germanic with a LOT of French vocabulary.

[@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!

[@RallyGal94]

Modern English vs German. Mein haus ist grun. My house is green. I work with medieval manuscripts regularly. Our working vocabulary, the most common every day words, are mostly germanic. Within a few generation of 1066 the originally french nobility barely spoke it anymore. The masses did not speak french for the most part at all.

[@Bjowolf2]

D & N Mit ( NB "min" with some nouns! ) hus [hoos] er [air] grønt ( grøn) . S Mitt hus är grönt (grön). NB OE hus (!) , the form "house" is due to a later common vowel shift in Middle English, so even though it looks and sounds similar to the G Haus, they are not directly related. Yes, I imagine that the Normanic and French speaking court, nobility and their officials etc. having to pick up the hitherto very low status (Middle) English tongue of the common people ( peasants, workers, serfs, fishermen etc.) - especially after 1348 ( The Black Death ) - must have been like a real life version of the hilarious British comedy series 'Allo, 'Allo ( set in France during WW2 ), where everyone speaks English with all sorts of weird French accents ( and silly vowels ), especially the "French" policeman ( who is really an English spy ), who constantly gets all of his vowels completely wrong. Not until 1366 was English spoken (again) in the parliament for the first time in 300 years (!) ( according to the records ), and it wasn't until after 1400 that the English kings began to speak in English as their main language - possibly as a result of the long lasting war(s) with France ( the Hundred Years War ). So maybe this whole mess with many formerly French speaking nobles and high status people "suddenly" turning into English speakers ( presumably with heavy accents ) over a fairly short period through sheer necessity is what really got the famous Great Vowel Shift started in English ( c. 1350 to 1700 )? 🤔 Check out BBC's great series The Adventure of English" on KZbin - especially episodes 1 - 3 in this context ( 8 episodes in all a c. 50 mins ).

[@BLexl]

Haus.. in some German accents n dialects still Huus. So them not being related.. I challenge that

[@Bjowolf2]

@@BLexl Yes, but "hus" is the original version in OE, wheras the version "house" is due to a later (isolated) vowel shift in Middle English (ME) - and thus not directly related to "Haus" in German, even though they sound alike.

[@gorego]

Mein Haus ist grün, that makes an huge difference.

[@svemee]

Bjowolf2 By the way, Haus in modern German is due to a vowel shift from Mittelhochdeutsch hus. Isn’t that curious?

[@GroundThing]

I've tried learning Spanish and German in middle school and high school, and it was so much easier to learn German, because the syntax made more sense with English, and the cognates were more common in more common words, as you demonstrated.

[@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!

[@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)

[@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.

[@EliasGabriel-c8i]

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

[@CSSP_1188]

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

[@cosmodeus1720]

It doesn't matter that much of the vocabulary is Romance based. Japanese has TONS of borrowed words, most of them English, but that doesn't mean Japanese is partly an English language.

[@ericcolvin3546]

I'm there now. The structure of Japanese is so far removed from any of the Frankish languages (the Francs, to the rest of the world, were all of the various pre-industrial European dynasties - including those in Britain) that the borrowing of vocab is hardly relevant. The biggest influence on Japan is Chinese Kanji - which are madenningly frustrating for Europeans because there is no phonetic consistency: each Kanji conveys a nuanced meaning via its pictographic form, without there being any reliable way to grasp how to pronounce it. That they can even manage to speak English is, itself, impressive - facilitated by the fact that the other two alphabets (Katakana and Hiragana - all three are used in conjunction) at least have some similarities to the European tradition of associating actual mouth sounds - in this case whole syllables - with specific symbols.

[@DavidCBSF]

yet

[@highpath4776]

In part its not the word itself but the grammatical use and changes and adaptations to the root word - particulary when the word is an action word and not a soley naming noun word.

[@Laceykat66]

Yes, sort of what he said. The classification of languages is NOT based on vocabulary but what you DO with those words.

[@moodini99]

You're right. Although, the guy in the video did make that exact same point quite clearly

[@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...

[@gledwood9108]

It's a Germanic language with Romance vocabulary. One thing you didn't mention: English still has a very germanic sound no matter what accent a person is speaking in; it doesn't sound anything like a romance language.

[@paulgorman2801]

I'm a native English speaker; English is a hybrid language. Latin was a prestige language that was in the British Isles (Romano Britain) & it never left even after the English came in during the Great Migration. The Celtic/English monks & missionaries spoke it and kept it alive alongside English/Celtic languages. French made English a permanent hybrid language because just as the Franks themselves were Latinized: So too, were the English.

[@contactolequotidien8492]

I’m Mexican and I went to a German school all my life and actually first learned German since I was in kindergarten, and by the time I was un 5th grade we started to learn English it actually made it a bit hard at first because I started to mix the three languages because English is pretty much in the middle of those two, obviously Spanish and french and Latin share lots of words and that influence was obvious while learning English, also the Germanic part was obvious and made it very complex to separate for me (I’m not very good at learning languages tbh), and what is worst is that the Mexican dialect has absorbed plenty of English which blurred the line very much of what was a Latin origin and Anglo origin, for example many people call pick ups - troca which comes from truck, carro - car, so for me English became a very strange language, also to make things worst imagine your first approach to English being taught by a Scottish teacher.

[@powerdriller4124]

You should have started from the end of your statement. The only real problem was the Scottish teacher.

[@chunksloth]

AHAHAHAHA Scottish people should not be allowed to teach English 😂🤣😂🤣

[@wrkl8846]

oof

[@PIANOPHUNGUY]

Car in English come from Latin "carrus" meaning a wagon. About 115 years ago a car was first called "a horseless carriage.' Notice car is short from carriage which written above comes from "carrus".

[@Timurv1234]

Excuse me, but I have to correct you: at 4:20, it says that hypo is from Latin, but that's not correct. Hypo and hyper come from Greek, but they have cognates in Latin (sub and super).

[@meteoman7958]

Nice catch!

[@Evan_Meyer]

'υπερ is super!

[@g.thomashart9368]

...begging the question - Is Latin a 'Greekic' (Hellenic) language? Judging by many years' work in etymology of scientific terms, almost all of Latin came from Greek.

[@agricolaregs]

Latin and Greek are both part of mother Indo-European, as is Sankrit in India...so there are similarities...and Latin does have some Greek in it, as the Greeks colonized Italy, but it is also mixed with the languages of the Native Italian tribes like the Latins and Sabines and such. The word for mother is the same in Latin, Greek, and Sankrit, but I think Latin developed that independently from the Greek, but it did borrow words like musica during colonization and mixing. Then more Greek words entered into the language towards the end of the Empire. At least...that's my understanding, but I am not a linguist.

[@coyotelong4349]

+G. Thomàs Hart Latin is from the Italic language branch of Indo-European, while Greek is from the Hellenic branch. Neither one is descended from the other; the only relation that they both have is that they are both distinct branches of Indo-European.

[@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

[@Nostalgic_4_Disaster]

@@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.

[@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

[@deranged1313]

Can you do a video about rise and fall of French as a lingua franca?

[@dylanwelch8228]

I second that thought! Great idea

[@ZhangtheGreat]

I'm not familiar with the depth of that history, but I believe either the turning point or climax of French as a lingua franca was post-WWI during the Versailles peace talks. Neither British Prime Minister David Lloyd George nor US President Woodrow Wilson spoke French, but the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau spoke fluent English. Since then, English either became or was basically established as the new lingua franca.

[@goytabr]

I'm from Brazil. My first passport, issued when I was a kid in 1972, was written in Portuguese and French only, as French was the international diplomatic language back then (it still has an important role in diplomacy - for example, new ambassadors' credential letters are still mostly written in French, except when both countries speak the same language). My second and third passports, issued in 1991 and 1997, were from a new model, written in Portuguese, French and English. My fourth one, issued in 2010, was from a newer model written in Portuguese and English only (although that usual "foreign authorities are requested..." phrase still had a French version, but it was the only part in French in the entire document). Brazilian passports are now of a brand-new model (I don't have one yet) in four languages: Portuguese, English, Spanish (as our relations with neighbouring South American countries have become more important), and French is back. But field headings on the page with the bearer's personal data are still in Portuguese and English only.

[@Вольныйказак-ю2й]

It is still a Lingua Franca, at least in the Francophone world.

[@dylanwelch8228]

No it's not because it's their native language. A lingua franca is a language used by speakers of other different languages as a means to communicate.

[@TenThumbsProductions]

I taught ESL for six years and in the process picked up Spanish and fell in love with language in general before I made a run at being a music teacher. I must say, I love this channel man, very informative, interesting, with a great neutrality to it, just fantastic man. If in the future you needed any idea a series of videos on interesting etymology of words would be awesome, maybe the funniest cognates, and phenology within a language would be great. Great work man. If you ever need a Ukulele player for a video let me know, haha, if I need some language breakdown for a song I'll get a hold of you. Cheers again man.

[@Langfocus]

+TenThumbs Productions Thanks, man! I appreciate it :)

[@ButterHugger]

@@Langfocus still waiting for this epic collab

[@Dentsun4228]

my vote is: A germanic language with strong latin influences.

[@RicardoMartinez-jy5lo]

Yes, open any English dictionary and count the French words in any page, lots of them.

[@lindaholen1368]

I just cal English a cluster fuck

[@swaythegod5812]

Yet there is more romance words in the language by objective fact makes it a romance language

[@viddl8267]

@@swaythegod5812 a comparison to my language swiss german: da si me romanischi wörtr i dr Sprach, bi objektive Faktä, ds machts ä romanischi Sprach Änglish. there are more romanic words in the language, by objektive Facts, that makes-it a romanis language

[@deathonion404]

@@swaythegod5812 that's not how it works at all mate

[@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 🤷‍♂️

[@philmbridges]

The further north you go in England the more pronounced old english becomes! We still you forms of thee and thou!

[@higoralves7048]

My dear, check for the thee and thou origin

[@kjn6505]

I say thee but not thou....

[@niallwallace7457]

And then you enter Scotland and discover lots more links to Norse and Dutch into the both the form of English spoken there and in the Scots language.

[@SchmulKrieger]

1rst doest thou want ... Is the correct one.

[@Odinsday]

Scotland and Northern England have a lot of Middle English dialects. They look and sound very different. They sound like they came from a Shakespearean play while the structure is similar to Dutch. It’s more true to English than modern English.

[@saldealbuquerque102]

Germanic grammar, latin vocabulary.

[@shon2365]

Exactly

[@vgjl1824]

Yes yes yes

[@gioq4702]

not only vocabulary... it also has some latin features. like "like-able" and some others

[@polishfenian]

Latin vocabulary outside of everyday use*

[@gioq4702]

@Benji Asperheim altough these common words are no longer mutually intelligible.. it's not like italian and Spanish. A native english speaker has some advantage in learning latin languages but not really german... also paradoxically Coming from Latin studies helps a bit in studying german because of some grammar features that are lost in english. Like cases and gender.

[@lyricstvdeutschland2075]

Evryone who speaks an other germanic language then english, will instantly recognize that english is germanic

[@afternoobtea914]

Tycker mycket om att se dina videor.

[@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!

[@thomaskn1012]

I am always impressed with the content of Paul's videos. So packed full of information that I would have never realized.

[@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.

[@hutty8667]

Borrowed words does not find out the forefather of a speech, the frame does. English is Germanic. You can make a speech with only Germanic words like "That is an apple and that is a book. I shall eat the apple and read the book". Now remake those words with Latin-blood words. It can't be done. So whatever you say, English is always and is a Germanic speech. Now look at the words I used to make this speech. It is all Germanic. Note: I can speak a little Anglish which made me write this comment that is fully Germanic to prove that English is Germanic. So for anyone who might be confused: Forefather (Ancestor) Speech (Language, sentence) Frame (Structure) Latin-blood (Romance)

[@RicardoMartinez-jy5lo]

True, I am in Sweden without speaking a word of Swedish yet oftentimes I can read the signs because Swedish is a Germanic language, like indeed English.

[@zyklonb9745]

Not true at all. I am Polish living in Poland and I know the English language quite well. I've been in Spain 20x times and I also understand some of your words. Which means Spanish is germanic language right?

[@KipTM]

@@vikingexploring "i am in sweden" doesn't mean "i live in sweden"

[@KaosGamer11234]

@@zyklonb9745 No, Spanish is not a Germanic language, it’s derived from Latin

[@KaosGamer11234]

@@zyklonb9745 Also I find it much easier to learn Spanish than German and the same goes for most Americans

[@zyklonb9745]

@@KaosGamer11234 Of course Spanish is derived from Latin and English ia at least 60 % based on Latin. This why I do understand a lot of Spanish or Italian words

[@cracco6628]

Without romance vocabulary you could still talk in (a pretty simple) english, but you couldn't without germanic vocabulary. That makes it germanic.

[@germanfish3395]

True

[@motts8084]

Wahrheit

[@compatriot852]

You really can't. It would be the simplest of sentences and wouldn't make any sense in most cases. Basically cave men talk

[@radwald189]

@@compatriot852 No it's not 😂

[@mariamelliusfalkenhayn481]

Yes

[@felipefauvel]

I speak portuguese, an authentic romance language, and I can surely say, english has nothing in common with a romance language, except for the vocabulary. The way you speak, the way you built the terms, the concepts and the phrases (syntaxes), even the sound tone of the language and the pronunciation of the vowels and consonants are completely strange for whom speak any latin language. I can find more similarities in any of the features quoted above listening an italian speaking or a french, than an english speaker. It is easier to find similarities reading latin itself, sometimes I can discover the latin word, with my Portuguese knowledge. What I want to say is that the "spirit" of english sounds like an germanic strange language, at least for a romance language speaker, even though there are many latin and french words in English vocabulary.

[@mickkeker1990]

I know exactly what you mean, as a English speaker I see root words too while studying these other Germanic languages. For example, the Old Norse word for “fee” is “fe” (pronounced fey), or in German itself, “wasser” means “water”. I don’t find much Latin unless it’s something of scientific origin. Perhaps body parts or various animals and plants. English has been “tainted” by the French language though, “Old English” sounded extremely German.

[@piergi81]

@@mickkeker1990 In your text I see: "exactly, studying, languages, example, pronounced, German, scientific, origin, parts, various, animals, plants, sounded, extremely." All these words are of Latin origin. The only ones you also find in German are "studying", "plants" and "extremely".

[@josemachina3996]

Same here it sounds German

[@MW_Asura]

@@piergi81 Irrelevant, I'll repeat it for you: "The way you speak, the way you built the terms, the concepts and the phrases (syntaxes), even the sound tone of the language and the pronunciation of the vowels and consonants are completely strange for whom speak any latin language." You understand now? It's not a matter of vocabulary, it's a matter of foundation and grammar, and both of those are Germanic when it comes to English, which makes it a Germanic language

[@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.

[@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.

[@miketurner3461]

I speak both German and Spanish. I find speaking German correctly is actually easier than it is in Spanish because the grammar and some of the ways of thinking about things are a lot more similar. But having an intelligible conversation in Spanish is easier because more of the vocabulary is shared.

[@alonsoantiprogre]

Mike Turner haha, german is harder

[@larryf2821]

Not to play into stereotypes but I thnk the German language is much more logically structured. When you begin a sentence in German you have to know how it ends, in Spanish and English this is not the case

[@luckyapple2655]

Larry F Sind Sie sicher? Die deutsche Sprache ist sehr schwierig für die deutsche Leute selber! Grammatik ist sehr kompliziert. Ich lebe schon vor drei Jahren in Hamburg. Ich habe gelesen und gelernt so viel, und trotzdem scheint es aus als ob man fängt an noch wieder ganz am beginn zu sein. Meine Güte!!!

[@cigmorfil4101]

Curious - I have heard that Spanish is easier than French and German (I learnt the latter two, but my nephew learnt the first [only I believe]).

[@gfyphg9871]

it seems like you don´t know anything about spanish

[@markcarey8426]

I heard a quote that said, "English is the result of a liason between an ango-saxon barmaid and a Norman soldier, and the result was illegitimate."

[@metacosmos]

I heard a quote saying. English language has almost no grammar but the British understand each other despite it.

[@anthonybrownhovelt]

@zondaintheair He was a bastard both literally and metaphorically!

[@metacosmos]

English language is only a language when it is Shakesperian English, Oxford English or Queen's English, but slang, cockney or Australian english are only primitive, stone age linguos.@Ken Hudson

[@metacosmos]

@Ken Hudson i believe that American English got a lot of influence from the Indian dialects spoken in North America, and their way of talking like a duck. In war, you the Britisth act like anglo-saxons, danes and northmans and celts, as those are your breed. Ther Americans act like wild people, as their Capitalist system is not other thing that a wild version of british capitalism.

[@fleisbester612]

So english is a bastard?

[@alfresco8442]

Even though he admits that English is a Germanic language, Paul still makes the mistake that most non-British make of thinking that most of the foreign influence was introduces way back by the Normans. It wasn't; the Norman ruling class were all speaking English within a few centuries. Of course they introduced many foreign words...especially ones that relate to the aristocracy and the law, but many of the other words were simply inserted alongside the original English; they didn't replace it. That's the beginning of the process that makes the English vocabulary so huge. The irony is that even the word 'Law' is Germanic, meaning 'that which is laid down'. Yes we have flowers, but we still also have blooms. We have chair, but we still have stool. We have rapid, but we still have quick (OE cwic) speedy, fast etc. Even less obvious ones like table...but we still have board...as in sideboard or boarding house. The board refers to the table, not the bed, hence full board or half board. Many English words were re-purposed to mean something slightly different; so we now use 'foreign' but we still have 'outlandish'. The list is endless The simple fact is that most of the massive amount of Latin Greek and French, that the statistics suggest, was introduced in the Age of Reason in the 17th and 18th centuries for technical, scientific and philosophical use...and much of it is still parked there, away from everyday use. However, the language that existed before that time (like Shakespeare) is still perfectly understandable to the average English speaker. The sonnet 'Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day' averages only about 1 ''foreign' word per line in the entire poem. Far fewer than the raw statistics suggest It's not so much that the foreign imports replaced the English; it's more a case of them being piled on top, for specialist use. This is why English has a crazy vocabulary of 170,000 words, yet French has less than 100,000. Over 80% of the most common words in modern English are derived from Old English; and more than 75% of the top 100 most common words in Old English are still used today.

[@ThunderBassistJay]

To my opinion English is a Germanic language. In the German language many Romance words can be found as well.

[@BewareOfTheKraut]

Yep and some French as well (Napoleonic occupation).

[@Mortablunt]

All I need to say: "Ja, ich kann." "Yeah, I can."

[@xxZitroxx]

+BewareOfTheKraut Very true. Also the huegenots brought many french words into the German language in the areas they were allowed to settle (e.g. Boulette in Berlin vs Frikadelle in the Rhineland). In addition French was the language of the upper class and for international diplomacy for a very long time. The latter is still partly true and one of the main reasons why German diplomats need to speak very good french.

[@ThunderBassistJay]

Also the Roman Catholic Church brought some Latin into the German language.

[@Kleo3392]

It's not a matter of opinion. English is a Germanic language, and that's that.

[@Johnybogo]

This makes a lot of sense to me, the more advanced the English the more Latin and Greek Influence I find. English is a really special language because we have a vernacular Germanic language but when you speak more intellectually you get a lot of Latin (French) and Greek. (When I read my college books I notice A LOT of root words)

[@saidhammar5006]

In the past and for a long time, germanic was considered barbarian, and romance civilization. That's why the phenomenon of importing more and more romance and greek, to look more smart, noble, and holly. And that's also why the Franks opted for a Romance language, forgetting back the Frankish one at all. But then in the modern era, Rome and its anciant glory have been forgotten, and England have been stronger and stronger, until it became the new center of glory and civilization, and the feeling of romance = civilization have been forgotten so we dont understand anymore the "why all those romance and french words in english", and moreover, it's the rest of the world, especially French, that have been importing more and more english and english like words so as to look more fashion, class, and sophisticated... so ironic how the english overturned the world !?

[@ryan7864]

Not really "Ironic", but logical. Rome is the bedrock of Western Civilization, therefore, the power's that followed are natural evolutions to include language influences.

[@dutchyjhome]

Actually the Latin and Greek influences are pure polution in your language because some of less intelectual people feel the need to look important by using Latin and Greek. The more of this stupid habbit is rewarded, the more unpure your Germanic language will become. It actually is very sad that we allow this pollution, this unpurification into the language as is. (in all Germanic languages basically...) If someone feels the need to act "important"; make sure you know all of original Germanic English words instead of the latin or even Greek polution of English. Be proud of the fact that you are the speaker of an original Germanic language; lets get it purified into a true Germanic language again ! No more sad Latin of even Greek influences ! Basta!

[@AndrewBeals]

This is effectively the point I came here to make, but V. A. stated in a much better way. As you touch on here, code-switching (in English) to a mixed vocabulary happens when speaking in a more intellectual way. Constrastingly, in the video, Paul gives an example that is a simple sentence about having lunch then reading a book - he notes that it consists of a fully Germanic vocabulary. When English-speakers are speaking plainly, or better yet, excited and perhaps pushed to the point of swearing, English speakers won't double-code Romance words and default to a plain and declarative Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. Consider the HBO series "Deadwood" and the language used when interacting formally with others vs. the character's vocabulary when they're fighting or struggling with a task.

[@dannhymir9678]

@@dutchyjhome That's history and now part of the English language. You can't change it now. Also take some history classes. There's a reason English borrowed from Greek and Latin, and it wasn't just to "look" or "sound important". Many of the words or roots that were borrowed happened because there was no English or Germanic equivalent or was completely new in any language. Greek and Latin though were the languages also used in universities and by academics and they were languages understood all over Europe so that made it easier to communicate just like English is today. Finally English was a common language among the common uneducated peoples and once Middle English developed there was no easy way for the English people to look back at their original Germanic ancestor language to keep using old terms when new ones became available. This happens to all languages not just English. There's no such thing as keeping a language "pure" even "isolated" languages borrow words from neighbor languages (ie Basque and Spanish).

[@azerefendizade6017]

I am a 14 year old in Canada so I learn French in school, but I have studied German before and it has been easier than French.

[@barronhung8246]

Azer Efendizade good for you :) people are just exaggerating the difficulty of German. Keep up the hard work!

[@azerefendizade6017]

@@barronhung8246 Thanks! German just sounds really close to English in its nature, while French sounds alien.

[@barronhung8246]

Azer Efendizade nah both of them sound nice. French sounds weird sometimes cos you don’t pronounce some of the alphabets of words. I’m technically Canadian lol but is French really useful in Canada?

[@SantiagoGeffen]

@@barronhung8246 it is, if you live in Quebec.

[@dannielhmora]

I guess it's because what Paul says. The structure of English it's quite similar to German's.

[@drnoalcohol]

The core vocabulary of English, everyday, household words are Germanic. When it comes to the words relating to what I'll call high culture, because the British people learnt these from outside interaction once from like French in judiciary, government and cuisine, religion from Latin, it gradually improved its vocabulary like onion layers, in each domain of knowledge from the languages it interacted.