what is the closest language to english???

Question

don't answer unless you've researched it first. seriously. it's very bad to spread information that you're just guessing the answers to. there is only one correct answer, so i'm expected all of the answers to be exactly the same for this.

invariably, some of you will just answer whatever you think is right even though you nothing about this subject. seriously though, that's a bad thing to do. it fills the world with misinformation.

stop saying "german", people. that answer is flat out wrong. i know you guys think that english CAME FROM german, but it didn't. you're getting confused because you're hearing that english is a "germanic language".

saying the english evolved from german is like saying that humans evolved from chimpanzees. the truth of the matter is, humans and chimpanzees evolved from a COMMON ANCESTOR. this is also the case with german and english. the name of that common ancestor is PROTO WEST GERMANIC (that's what we call it nowadays. when it existed, it probably had no name.) , and it was very different from both english and german.

even then though, german is certainly not the closest language to english. dutch is clearly intermediate between the two. (cf. english "day" vs. dutch "dag" vs. german "tag") -- the original word was probably "dag". english palatalized the "g" though, and german went through what's called the "hochdeutsch shift". this caused voiced stops to become voiceless..........

...... (i.e. - d ---> t and g ---> k) the "g" is pronounced like a "k". they just didn't change the spelling.

so the answer definitely isn't german, because dutch is closer. i'm not saying dutch is the right answer. i'm just saying that german isn't. all you guys who said german are misinforming people.

Answer 1

I believe linguists consider Frisian to be the closest.

Answer 2

There are three choices -- Scots, Frisian and Dutch.

It just depends on how you define "different language", and if you think if matters how many speakers the language has.

First, the "American" bit is nonsense -- American & British English are clearly dialects of one common language.

How about GERMAN? -- No, not quite. The language we know as German is actually "High German", so-called because it is spoken in the inland, elevated areas (originally spoken in "Prussia", the eastern part of modern Germany, this was the language of Luther), whereas English is more closely related to the "Low German" languages of the lowlands closer to the sea.

1) So the first reasonable candidate is SCOTS, that is "Lowland Scots" or "Ulster Scots" (to distinguish it from the Gaelic language known as Highland Scots). Some, however, simply treat this is a dialect of English.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language.

2) The next closest, and clearly a distinct language is FRISIAN, "spoken by about half a million members of an ethnic group living on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_language

3) If that's not a large enough group to count, you'd have to go with DUTCH. (Compare also Low German dialects in the Northwestern part of Germany, such as "Plattdeutsch", and Afrikaans, which was originally a Dutch dialect.)
http://ucl.ac.uk/dutch/why_dutch/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language#Classification_and_related_languages

Answer 3

The closest related language to English is Frisian, spoken on the coast of the North Sea from the Netherlands to Denmark. The next closest languages are Dutch and Low German. The next closest is High German (Modern Standard German). These are the West Germanic languages. Icelandic, Faroese, Nynorsk, Danish, and Swedish are the North Germanic languages, and the extinct Gothic is the principal East Germanic language.

NOTE: Scots is sometimes counted as a separate language from English. If you count it as a separate language, it is the closest to English, but if you don't count it as a separate language, Frisian is the closest. It all depends on where you draw the line between two languages and two dialects of the same language.

EDIT: Toby, I too get frustrated at the number of people who don't really know the answer, but just shout out something to get the two points.

Answer 4

I speak English, Dutch, German and French. I understand Frisian as well. From my own experience, and from my studies, I can tell you that French is the most different from the languages above. All languages spoken in America and Western Europe, originate from Latin and Ancient Greek.

There are two sub - categories; the Roman languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian) and the German languages (Modern German, Dutch, English). So Dutch and Modern German are etymological the most related to English.

More specifically; Germany is an 'isolated' country. Nowhere else they speak German. But where they speak Dutch (Belgium & The Netherlands), lots of people speak English as well. In Germany, much less people speak English.

This is theoretically why Dutch must be the most related to English. In reality, this corresponds. I'm Dutch, so I know English is the language that is most similar to Dutch. To be more specific; Flemish is most related to English. In Belgium and in The Netherlands they pronounce Dutch differently. In Belgium it's called Flemish (Vlaams). In The Netherlands it's called 'Hollands'.

Some words in the Dutch language, you will understand. But French will be a lot tougher!

This is all very theoretically. But when you study English and Dutch grammar, you wil find loads of similarities!

Happy to be able to help you!

Answer 5

I agree with the spreading of false information... its annoying.

According to my Websters New World Dictionary, English is grouped in the Germanic languages under West Germanic and Low German category. The other languages in the Low German category are: Afrikaans, Dutch, Flemish, Modern Low German, and Frisian.

Much of the same information can be found on Wikipedia. According to their sources, Frisian, speoken in Northern Netherlands and Northwest Germany is very similar to English. If I had to pick one language... it would have to be Frisian.

I also remember my 11th grade English teacher talk about seeing a foreign film in "Dutch" and she thought she could understand it without subtitles. It was probably in Frisian.

Answer 6

if you follow the language tree the language that appears to be closest to english is Frisian.

Proto-Indo-European > Proto-Germanic > West Germanic > Anglo-Saxon > Old English (> middle english) >English

Also from Anglo-Saxon > Old Frisian > Frisian.

Grammatically it is closest but because of the norman invasion in 1066 a lot of new words were introduced, mainly from Old French, which is why most of our vocabulary derives from Latin. But the Germanic grammar is what separates English from Roman languages and the vocabulary is what separates it from Frisian and German. Technically frisian is the closest but you may find the learning Romance languages like French and Spanish is easier because the words are so similar. Hope that helps you.

Answer 7

German.

The English language belongs to the western sub-branch of the Germanic branch which is itself a branch of the Indo-European family of languages.

The question as to which is the nearest living relative of English is a matter of some discussion. Apart from such English-lexified creole languages such as Tok Pisin and Bislama, Scots, which is spoken primarily in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland, is the Germanic variety most closely associated with English. Like English, Scots ultimately descends from Old English, also known as Anglo-Saxon. The closest relative to English after Scots is Frisian, which is spoken in the Northern Netherlands and Northwest Germany. Some consider Scots to be a dialect of English and some consider Frisian to be a dialect of Dutch. Both are recognised by the governments of their respective states as regional languages (Scots by the United Kingdom [3] and by the Republic of Ireland [4]; Frisian by Germany and the Netherlands [5]). Other less closely related living languages include German itself, Low German, Dutch, the Scandinavian languages, and Afrikaans, which is descended from Dutch.

Many French words are also intelligible to an English speaker (though pronunciations are often quite different) because English absorbed a large vocabulary from French, via the Norman after the Norman conquest and directly from French in further centuries. As a result, a substantial share of English vocabulary is quite close to French, with some minor spelling differences (word endings, use of old French spellings, etc.), as well as occasional divergences in meaning.

Answer 8

I was curious about the exact same question and I read that the closest languages to English are in fact Frisian and Scots. I didn't really even know these languages existed to be honest, but if you do some research and find some webpages published in these languages, you can definately see a strong resemblance. Check out some sound clips if you can too, I did that and I was amazed.

Answer 9

Not guessing.

English was originally a dialect of German. It got mixed with Latin around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire and mixed with French after the Norman conquest of England in 1066 (the Normans were from France). So, I guess the closes language would be German.

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Answer 10

American English is from General/British/European English
European English has GERMAN descent. Most words sound closest to their German cousins. So German is closest to English. Many words in English are Latin based, so Spanish, French and Italian (and Latin of course), are next in line for similarity.

Answer 11

I'll agree with Frisian, and also some Platt-Deutsch. Have a look at it. But English has got so mixed with French now that it is quite dissimilar. It's an amalgamation of quite a lot of languages.