English Is a Member of Which Language Family?
How important is family to you lot? Researchers say that strong family bonds contribute to longer, healthier lives. If that's truthful, building loving relationships tin can do good you. Believe it or not, languages have families too! Linguists categorize languages into families, or groups, with like backgrounds. English is part of the Indo-European language family. Tracing the family tree of the English language volition aid you lot understand how English fits into this particular language family.
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Outset, visualize your family tree. How far back tin can y'all trace your genealogy? Your parents and siblings would occupy the branches closest to you. Then, the tree branches extend upward to include grandparents, bully-grandparents, then on. Some people can trace their family for generations, but everyone eventually reaches a indicate where they lose track of the names.
Hundreds of languages compose the Indo-European family, so linguists divide them into closely related subfamilies. The Germanic co-operative is ane of the ten or so Indo-European subfamilies. Germanic languages are English's distant cousins, so to speak. The Germanic family unit itself has subgroups; English is in the West Germanic co-operative forth with High german, Dutch, Afrikaans, and a few others. What makes English like the other languages in its subfamily?
W Germanic languages all trace back to one parent language. No one knows its name or exactly how information technology sounded. Linguists conjecture its characteristics from modern languages that descended from it. Simply like children who inherit features from their parents, languages that share West Germanic parentage accept family characteristics. Of course, not every linguistic communication of the group has every single trait. In humans, green eyes and curly hair might run in a family unit. Yet, features of individual children may vary. Of three children, peradventure only one has light-green optics and curly hair. Another may have green eyes, but straight hair. The third might have curly hair and brown optics. Nonetheless, when they stand together, onlookers may declare that they certainly look alike! Languages inside the same family unit exhibit similar variations. To illustrate, compare "Adept morning" or "Adept mean solar day" in some of the Germanic languages. In that location's the German Guten Morgen, the Dutch Goedemorgen, the Swedish God morgon, and the Danish Godmorgen. Non twin phrases, exactly, but don't you see a definite family resemblance?
At that place is evidence that thousands of years agone, the people of southern Scandinavia and northern Germany spoke this ancestor linguistic communication of English. Speakers of this proto-language migrated. Every bit they went their separate means, the language evolved differently in each grouping. Eventually, the languages became distinctly different tongues, merely they retained some similar features that make them identifiable as part of the same language family unit. To compare, let'south look at "Skillful day" in the Romance languages. These languages fall into one of the near widely-spoken subgroups of the Indo-European family, but they are not on the same co-operative as the Germanic languages. The French Bonjour is quite similar to the Italian Buongiorno. Yet, the terms are unlike the English language ones because the Romance languages are not as closely related to English language as the Germanic languages are.
Await a minute! There are enough of English language words that are most exactly like their French or Italian equivalents. And doesn't English borrow a lot of phrases from the Latin-based Romance languages? Yes, thousands of English language words come directly from Latin. However, the incorporation of Latinate words into English is a rather contempo development when compared to the unabridged history of its evolution. Rather than evolving solely from the Germanic root language, some words arrived through intermarriage.
Linguists use many factors, such every bit grammer, phonology, and vocabulary, to determine the historical ancestry of modern languages. The overall composition of English language reveals strong Germanic roots. It'south official: English language is a proud member of the Westward Germanic linguistic communication family! Have you learned to speak other languages likewise English? Or is a different linguistic communication your native tongue? All languages have family lineages that are fascinating to trace. Why not do a little research? Getting to know the history of languages will strengthen your appreciation for the ones you speak. 
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Source: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/why-english-is-a-germanic-language/
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