The languages most similar to English are Scots and Frisian, as they share the most direct ancestry, with Scots being a close relative and Frisian (spoken in the Netherlands/Germany) having the highest lexical similarity (around 80%). Other Germanic languages like Dutch, German, and Scandinavian languages (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish) also share significant vocabulary and grammatical structures, while French and Spanish offer closer vocabulary due to historical influence, notes this Quora post.
Consequently, the impact of various languages has transformed English into a distinctive blend of Germanic and Romance tongues. Dutch, Frisian, and German stand as the nearest kin to English, with Frisian holding the strongest resemblance.
English is a hodge-podge language that pulls from many others, so you'll find cognates (words that sound and look similar in two languages) in both. German wins with the number of similarities, though—it shares over half of its words with English!
Frisian stands out as being the closest living relative to the English language within the Germanic family of languages. In addition, there are other similar languages in the Germanic family like Scots, Dutch, and German. On the other hand, French and Italian are the closest Romance languages to English.
Frisian, a close "cousin" to the English language that's still spoken today. Scots and English represent the "Anglo" portion of the Anglo-Frisian language family, which naturally leaves Frisian. Today, about 400,000 people in Denmark and the northern region of the Netherlands and Germany speak a Frisian language.
There's no single "hardest" language, but Mandarin Chinese is consistently ranked #1 for English speakers due to its tonal nature (four tones change word meanings) and complex logographic writing system requiring thousands of characters. Other top contenders often cited include Arabic (right-to-left script, complex sounds, grammar) and Japanese (multiple writing systems like Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana, plus honorifics). The difficulty depends heavily on your native language, with languages like Tibetan, Estonian, and Polish also challenging learners with unique grammar or cases.
Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) is an early form of the English language which was spoken in England around the year 1000. It is a West Germanic language, and is therefore similar to Frisian and Old Saxon. It is also quite similar to Old Norse (and, by extension, to modern Icelandic).
There's no single "number one" easiest language, as it depends on your native tongue, but for English speakers, Norwegian, Dutch, Afrikaans, Spanish, and Italian are consistently ranked as very easy due to similar Germanic roots (Norwegian, Dutch, Afrikaans) or shared Latin vocabulary (Spanish, Italian) with English, plus simple grammar and pronunciation. The truly easiest language is the one you're most motivated to learn and find engaging content in, as personal interest drives acquisition.
Having emerged from the dialects and vocabulary of Germanic peoples—Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—who settled in Britain in the 5th century ce, English today is a constantly changing language that has been influenced by a plethora of different cultures and languages, such as Latin, French, Dutch, and Afrikaans.
English is a Germanic language, whereas Italian is a Romance language. Yet, they share a substantial amount of vocabulary. The main reason is due to the Norman Conquest of England in the eleventh century. As a result, the English language borrowed a lot of French words.
In German, 777,777 is written as one long compound word: Siebenhundertsiebenundsiebzigtausendsiebenhundertsiebenundsiebzig, meaning "seven hundred seventy-seven thousand, seven hundred seventy-seven," showcasing German's ability to create huge words by joining smaller ones.
The top 3 languages to speak, based on the total number of speakers (native and non-native), are consistently English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi, followed closely by Spanish, making them essential for global communication, business, and culture, though their ranking can shift slightly by source.
As Swedish is a Germanic language, the syntax shows similarities to both English and German. Like English, Swedish has a subject–verb–object basic word order, but like German it utilizes verb-second word order in main clauses, for instance after adverbs and adverbial phrases, and dependent clauses.
Here are some pretty similar pairs:
Speaking of Dutch, the next closest relative on our list is none other than this lowlands language. Like Frisian and English, Dutch is another West Germanic language that developed from Proto-Germanic. Because of this, Dutch possesses many words and phrases similar to English and has a similar grammatical structure.
Mexico has 69 official languages, including Spanish and 68 indigenous languages (like Nahuatl and Maya), making it incredibly linguistically diverse, though South Sudan is also listed with 69 living languages in some counts, showing many countries have rich linguistic diversity. While Mexico is famous for this, the number refers to recognized languages, with hundreds of variations and dialects existing within them.
They estimated that the ancestry of the present-day English ranges between 25% and 47% Continental North European (similar to historical northern Germans and Danish), 11% to 57% similar to the British Late Iron Age, and 14% to 43% IA-like (similar to France, Belgium and neighbouring parts of Germany).
English is the number one international language (lingua franca), boasting around 1.5 billion total speakers, making it dominant in global business, technology, and tourism, even though Mandarin Chinese has more native speakers. While Mandarin is the largest by native speakers, English's vast number of second-language users cements its role as the primary global communication tool, followed by Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish in overall speaker numbers.
French – Ideal for fashion, diplomacy, and international organizations. Mandarin Chinese – A top choice for global business and trade. Spanish – Valuable in healthcare, education, and international relations. German – Essential for engineering, automotive industries, and finance.
10 Hardest Languages to Learn (Overall)
Esperanto (/ˌɛs.pə.ˈrɑːn.toʊ, -.ˈræn.toʊ/) is the world's most widely spoken constructed auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 as "the International Language" (la Lingvo Internacia), it is intended to be a universal second language for international communication.
Geordie. As the oldest English dialect still spoken, Geordie refers to the people and dialect of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in Northeast England.
The word thou (/ðaʊ/) is a second-person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in most contexts by the word you, although it remains in use in parts of Northern England and in Scots (/ðu:/).