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Oct 10, 2022 · Germanic languages are English’s distant cousins, so to speak. The Germanic family itself has subgroups; English is in the West Germanic branch along with German, Dutch, Afrikaans, and a few others.
English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands.
Mar 5, 2024 · English is unquestionably the world’s most widely used second language. The earliest historical evidence for Germanic is provided by isolated words and names recorded by Latin authors beginning in the 1st century bce. From approximately 200 ce there are inscriptions carved in the 24-letter runic alphabet.
The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which in Britain developed into what we now call Old English. Old English did not sound or look like English today. Native English speakers now would have great difficulty understanding Old English.
‘Germanic’ (Gmc) is the group of languages including modern German, Dutch and English which developed from Proto-Germanic — which in itself developed from Proto-Indo-European (PIE).1 Terry Hoad lists five significant features which demarcate Germanic languages from other Indo-European languages: the distinction between strong and weak verbs, the...
English language, Language belonging to the Germanic languages branch of the Indo-European language family, widely spoken on six continents.
So I believe it is safe to say that English has both a Romance and Germanic origin, arguably slightly more Germanic in view of the importance of the Germanic words in its basic vocabulary, and of the form if Germanic origin in its grammar (as a more precise analysis would show).
