what would be the closest langauge to english?

Answer 1

It's generally reckoned to be the Fresian dialect of Dutch. However, it you accept that "Scots" (spoken in the South of Scotland) is a language in its own right rather than a dialect of English, then that might have the edge.

Certain Pidgins/créoles appear to consist largely of what appear to be English words but are barely comprehensible to standard English speakers and are thus disqualified on that count.

Answer 2

There are three choices -- Scots, Frisian [NOT "Fresian"] and Dutch.

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

First, note that the answer "American", which you'll sometimes see to this question, is nonsense -- American & British English are clearly dialects of one common language.

Let's also discount various forms of "pidgin English" that have developed in some areas where English is not the native 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. " [note that is is NOT a "dialect of Dutch"]
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
________________________

To see in a CHART how Frisian, English.. Dutch (all West Germanic), etc. are related --
(West Germanic: Anglo-Frisian, Old Dutch, Old High German)
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/language.html

And note here, that these GERMANIC languages are NOT offshoots of Latin, but their own group. (English has indeed borrowed a large chunk of vocabulary from Latin, esp. via Norman French, but it is still a Germanic language, not a Romance one [Romance languages = offshoots of Latin - esp. French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish]

Answer 3

One of the closest is certainly Frisian (its three dialects, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_language).

Others include Dutch and Low German. You should take on account that Old English was made up from the languages of some (West) Germanic tribes, especially Angles and Saxons - hence the original Low West Germanic component.

However, English is certainly the Germanic language most influenced by French and Latin, and therefore you may find some confusion out there (like those comments preceding this one) about English being derived from Latin!

English, Scots, Dutch and Low German come all from Low West Germanic, and this branch, along with Upper West Germanic (High German, Alemannic), make up the West Germanic subgroup. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages

West Germanic, along with North Germanic (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic) and East Germanic (extinct, Gothic) form the Germanic branch of Indo-European. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Germanic

That old Germanic language (Proto-Germanic, spoken ca. 1.500 BCE) is related to Celtic, Italic, Slavic, etc. as brother dialects from a common source, the Proto-Indo-European language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language

Answer 4

Swedish and English grammar have only 11 differences, and much of the same vocabulary.

Answer 5

Most western languages started as dialects of Latin, i.e. French, English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greece, etc...

Answer 6

Probably French, as they share a lot of the same roots.

Answer 7

Yes. I'll go with the Fresian dialiect too.

Answer 8

Ebonics?? Latin??

Answer 9

maybe french ????