What Languages Are Similar To English?

When learning a language it is important to understand its relation to other languages and language families. This can help you break down and learn the original meanings of the words you are studying, helping you to decided what second or third languages to learn and helps you to understand the history and culture of the language you are learning.

English controversially, might have the most complex relations to other languages. Starting as the language from Germanic settlers, influenced by invasions by the vikings and French, taking words from Latin for scientific purposes and later taking words from all across the world during the height of the British Empire.

Eventually, leading to derived words from:

     

Classed as a West Germanic(see first picture), English still maintains many words and grammatical elements from its Dutch, German and Nordic neighbors. This makes Germanic languages (in relation order) like Flemish, Frisian, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and German relatively similar to English. Other languages such Luxembourgish, Faroese and Icelandic contain little resemblance to English on the surface, but do contain a good amount of similar features.

Romance languages pay heavy influence on English due to the 1066 Norman invasions which introduced French words into the vocabulary of the wealthy and during the age of enlightenment when Latin was unofficially chosen as the language of science. While few grammatics entered the language, a very large amount of romance language vocabulary is still present in today's English.

Thus, languages like French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian contain many intelligible words to English speakers. 

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