Nearly 75% of the words in the English vocabulary come from French, Latin, and the Romance Languages. Yet, English is considered a Germanic language. Why?
Writer and self proclaimed “etymologikonoclast” Teresa Elms of Eytmologikon answers this question in a blog post.
First, the most frequently used 80% of English words come from Germanic sources, not Latinate sources… Second, the syntax of English, although much simplified from its Old English origins, remains recognizably Germanic.
Elms also illustrates the “vocabulary divergences” among the European languages in an infographic, grouping the language family by color. Proximity of the circles indicates the lexical closeness of languages.
English is only one of the estimated 439 of the Indo-European languages. The Indo-European language family is only one of nearly a two dozen other language families.
To read more of Teresa Elm’s thoughts on language and etymology, visit her blog, Etymologikon.
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