The language group descended from Indo-European includes the Balto-Slavic, Albanian, Celtic, Italic, Greek, and Germanic families of languages. These two families are branches of a single prehistoric language called Indo-European or Proto-Indo-European.

This consists of the modern languages derived from Latin: Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Provençal, French, Italian, Rhaeto-Romance, and Romanian. The other principal European language family is the Italic (popularly called Romance).

The now defunct East Germanic branch consisted of Gothic, which is extinct. This family is divided into North Germanic (Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish) and West Germanic (English, Frisian, Flemish, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Yiddish). Q: I’ve read that a majority of the words in English are derived from Latin or French? So why is English considered a Germanic language, not a Romance language?Ī: Let’s begin with where linguists place English among the world’s languages.Įnglish, Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Frisian, Flemish, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, and Yiddish are the living languages that are part of the Germanic family.

Why are there german words in english