The closest language to English is one called Frisian, which is a Germanic language spoken by a small population of about 480,000 people. There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.
English vocabulary comprises 29% French, 29% Latin, 26% Germanic, and 6% Greek.
By linguist criteria English is more similar to German, both belong in the West Germanic languages and its vocabulary has been influenced by other Germanic languages as well.
“Lexical similarities” means how many words are identical (or nearly identical) between two languages. For Spanish and French, their lexical similarity is about 75%. In comparison, Spanish and English have a lexical similarity of only 30-50%, and French and English of only 40-50%.
Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon.
Closest Major Language: Dutch
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.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
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.
Norwegian is closer to English than either Danish or Swedish. In fact, it's often described as the easiest of the three languages to learn.
1. English (1,452 million speakers) According to Ethnologue, English is the most-spoken language in the world including native and non-native speakers. Like Latin or Greek at the time, English has become the world's common language.
Linguists use many factors, such as grammar, phonology, and vocabulary, to determine the historical ancestry of modern languages. The overall composition of English reveals strong Germanic roots. It's official: English is a proud member of the West Germanic language family!
The English largely descend from two main historical population groups: the West Germanic tribes, including the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians who settled in Southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Romans, and the partially Romanised Celtic Britons who already lived there.
What is the first language? Sumerian can be considered the first language in the world, according to Mondly. The oldest proof of written Sumerian was found on the Kish tablet in today's Iraq, dating back to approximately 3500 BC.
Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest for native English speakers to learn, followed by Portuguese and finally French.
But, some people may end up getting the shorter end of the stick — they can sometimes only understand a language without actually being able to speak it — a phenomenon officially called receptive multilingualism.
The origins of the word 'sorry' can be traced to the Old English 'sarig' meaning “distressed, grieved or full of sorrow”, but of course, most British people use the word more casually.
A handshake is still the most common way to greet someone, especially if you are in a formal situation at work. Shaking hands is the most common greeting between men, between women, and between men and women.
hi in British English
(haɪ ) sentence substitute. an informal word for hello.