Why is English considered a germanic language, but not a romance language?

[NeuroAtypical]

The ancient languages impact on English.

Germanic Languages 25.5%

Latin 28.4%

French 28.4%

Greek 5.9%

Other Languages 11.8%

Did you realize something funny? French and Latin have more influence on English than Germanic itself, if you join French and Latin, the both will have 56.8% of influence.

And I almost forgot, England was part of the Roman Empire.

[Weimu]

Цитата допису Knee:

a good portion of nouns adjectives and verbs may have latin roots but the lack of gender, declensions, classic verb conjugations are all missing and as others have said, english is mechanically different from more latin-based languages

well, the other germanic languages still have noun gender (and german still has declensions), so even compared to other germanic languages it's quite different. i would say english is fairly unique in that regard

[Xero_Daxter]

Same reason why Japanese isn’t a Sino-Tibetan Language. I studied both Chinese and Japanese and the only thing slightly similar with those languages is that Japan stole the Chinese alphabets and made their own.

[=(^ ^)=]

Because both Shakespear and Cheocer did inspire from the Italian Language.

[kilésengati]

Цитата допису Xero_Daxter:

Same reason why Japanese isn’t a Sino-Tibetan Language. I studied both Chinese and Japanese and the only thing slightly similar with those languages is that Japan stole the Chinese alphabets and made their own.

uHm AcShUaLlY…

Japanese is a Japonic language and could be distantly related to Korean.
Other than parts of the writing system, a fair bunch of loanwords and some grammatical structures that have been corrupted over time, it isn't considered related to Chinese languages.
Japanese has a similar historic and geographical relationship to the Chinese languages as English has to French.

[Lupinus Rictus]

English is more or less Germanic grammar or structure, but the words* are mostly made up of French and Latin

Цитата допису Neurodivergente:

.

And I almost forgot, England was part of the Roman Empire.

You mean Britain was a part of the Roman Empire, as England didn't yet exist in those days - yeah I know Mr Pedantic right here XD

*Nouns

[Tsubame ⭐]

While most words are of latin and romance origin, the structure of English is still germanic. English's syntax and structure is much closer to German or other germanic siblings, than any romance language.

Furthermore, words of germanic origin remain by far the most used. The core vocabulary - pronoums, conjunctions, determiners, verbs, numbers, adjectives, and so on - of English is still of germanic origin. Of the top 100 most used words in English, 80 are of germanic origin.

[Infinity868]

English is decidedly a Germanic language. Firstly, it descended from Proto-Germanic, meaning, it started out Germanic and had the Romantic influence added onto it later. Secondly, the percentages can be misleading - Romantic words are usually more scientific, legal, or specific. Germanic words still make up the "core" words of our language, the ones we speak the most often.
These are the most common answers, but I think the topic becomes the most clear when put this way: English looks and sounds similar to other Germanic languages - not Romance languages. If you put it side-to-side with Dutch and German, you can tell they're related. Any random native English speaker will see familiarity in Germanic languages when something like French would sound totally alien. It's this test that makes it obvious.
A final quick note: The Roman Empire was only in Britain before the Anglo-Saxons arrived from mainland Europe, so by the time English arrived, they had already left.

[crunchyfrog]

Because of what it's made from. It's predominantly German because that's where the bulk of the invasion came from back in the early days. The Frank invasion.

That of course does not mean it's ALL Germanic. As there's Norman French in there, as well as tradtional gaelic and so on. And of course when the invasion happened, they progressively came from the east and in time pushed the "old" tradiotional English speakers west.

This is why Welsh is more to the tradiitional Enlgish language, because that's mostly where the true natives ended up.

Really simple history.

And of course terms like this are somewhat loose too. As French itself is a Latin language.

[Kamiyama]

Yes most of the ancestry of northern Europe is descended from Germanic tribes. The Normans and Saxons who colonized Britain were Germanic tribes. Same for the Nordic tribes who settled Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and such areas. They are all Germanic. The Vikings were the same.

Slavs aren't considered Germanic for some reason, but they share the same ancestry as the Germanic peoples if you go back far enough. I'm not convinced that they are so distantly related that they shouldn't also be under the Germanic umbrella.

English is derived from Anglish, which just means "the language of the Angles" which refers to the Anglo-Saxons. It was the Saxons who were speaking it and spread it to Britain when they invaded.

Interestingly the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain in the 5th century (about 430 to 450 AD), and the Normans invaded later during the 11th century (1066). Before the Normans invaded Britain, they lived in Normandy and spoke Old French. After they invaded Britain they adopted the same language as the Saxons.

The Normans also adopted the Saxon model of government. The Normans were Feudal and had kings who ruled over serfs, but after they invaded Britain they adopted the much more complex representative government of the Saxons which had an early form of Parliament and various tiers of local government so that people could bring their concerns to local lords and elder councils and such.

So it's interesting that even though William the Conqueror invaded Britain in 1066 and established himself as the first king, instead of spreading the Norman language and Norman ways to the locals, they adopted the local language and local ways of doing things.

[vkobe]

Цитата допису NeuroAtypical:

The ancient languages impact on English.

Germanic Languages 25.5%

Latin 28.4%

French 28.4%

Greek 5.9%

Other Languages 11.8%

Did you realize something funny? French and Latin have more influence on English than Germanic itself, if you join French and Latin, the both will have 56.8% of influence.

And I almost forgot, England was part of the Roman Empire.

because when you listen german, english, french talking, it look german is more similar with english than french with english

example you remove w letter in french and it doesnt change so much french

but in english you remove w letter and you cripple totally english

same with y, french doenst really need y, but for english y is too much important to be removed