English is either an official language of, or widely spoken in, more than a quarter of all countries in the world, and though English only ranks number three by number of native speakers, English does have one and a half billion speakers in total, which is more than any other language.
Fun fact: the United States contains roughly 71% of the world’s native English speakers.
While studying foreign languages, I discovered that European languages are commonly divided into three major categories: Germanic, Slavic, and Romance. This discovery caused me to wonder in which category is English classified; I had always thought of English as its own category, therefore I was shocked when I learned that it is classified as a Germanic language.
What are the Germanic languages?
The Germanic languages are often split into three subdivisions: North Germanic, East Germanic, and West Germanic. The North Germanic subdivision contains Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, and Faroese. The East Germanic languages are now extinct; this subdivision contained Gothic, Vandalic, and Burgundian. The West Germanic subdivision contains a decent number of languages, the most notable of which are German, Dutch, and even English.
Understanding the relation between all these languages finally explains why Dutch and Norwegian appeared to me like a mixture of German and English. Many words across the Germanic languages seemed to be saying the same thing, but with slight variations in spelling and pronunciation.
Here is a simple sentence written in several germanic languages to emphasize their relation: in English, do you love English, in German, liebst du Englisch, in Dutch, hou je van Engels, in Norwegian, elsker du Engelsk, in Swedish, älskar du Engelska, in Danish, elsker du Engelsk, and in Icelandic, elskar þú Ensku. This is already quite convincing, however, if we take one step back in English history, we find ourselves in the midst of Early Modern English and this sentence would be said lovest thou English, which is very similar to German; it turns out that the second person singular verb ending in Early Modern English is the same as that of German (-st). The structure of Early Modern English sentences are also much more similar to German than Modern English. That could mean if you have a grasp on Early Modern English, you have a head start in learning German or other Germanic languages.
Another interesting observation I made is that Icelandic uses the word þú, which means you; Old English also used the word þú, which meant the same as the Icelandic word, until the letter þ (pronounced thorn) was replaced by th in Middle English.
Which of the Germanic languages is your favorite?
Onward American 