![]() ![]() French, a Romance language, is closely related to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and the nearly extinct Romansch language spoken in Switzerland.Īnswer: A shared language primarily used for business, education or political reasons.Ī "lingua franca" is a mutually understood language between two or more groups who do not share a native language. Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic are the other major surviving Germanic languages. Dutch is therefore the closest non-endangered language relative of English, followed somewhat distantly by German. German diverged as a standard language based on OHG's relatively distant proximity to the the North Sea (and Martin Luther's choice to translate the Bible from Latin into a High German dialect), and therefore German diverged from Dutch, Frisian and English. Frisian is the bridge of sorts between English and Low German/Dutch speakers. The dialects of the north separated into Dutch, Frisian and English as Teutonic tribes migrated westward. around Bavaria, or the highlands), while low German (Plattdeutsch), along the same argument, stems from the lowlands, or the northern areas of Germany. Contemporary German therefore stems from the dialects of the southern part of Germany (i.e. The "high" refers to altitude, not latitude (or even prestige, although coincidentally the prestigious connotation of "high" is appropriate for sociolinguistic considerations). Standard German of today is based on Old High German (OHG). ![]() ![]() ![]() However it is not the closest relative of English. German, with 100-150 million native speakers worldwide has the second-most speakers of a Germanic language after English. While French has had an enormous influence on the lexicon of English (thanks to the Norman invasion of 1066, and further through French political and social influence over centuries), Frisian, a nearly extinct Germanic language, is considered the closest relative of English per linguistic genetics. ![]()
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