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English belongs to the Germanic family of Indo-European languages. Old English (also known as Anglo-Saxon) had two main dialects. The Anglic dialect gave its name to the language, but the Saxon dialect eventually evolved into Modern English. Along the way, English was heavily influenced, both in grammar and vocabulary, by Norman French, itself a Germanicized member of the Romance family of Indo-European languages. One great strength of English is its power of incorporating or borrowing words from other languages, particularly French, Latin and Greek, but the language itself is not derived from these or any others.

Originals Celtic Germanic French, Borrowers Latin, Greek, and pretty well everything else to some small degree.

There are more Native American words in English than Celtic words. The Celtic affect on English is negligible.

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11y ago
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10y ago

English has been influenced by many languages, perhaps most deeply by Latin and Greek.

Aside from these Greek and Latin roots (sometimes through other European romance languages) English has adopted word and phrases from almost every language that the English have come in contact with. As a few examples:

  • Toboggan: Canadian aboriginal
  • Boomerang: Australian aboriginal
  • Samovar: Russian
  • Whiskey: Celtic
  • Lei: Polynesian
  • Igloo: Inuit
  • Kowtow: Japanese
  • Orangutan: Javanese
  • Algebra, Almanac: Arabic:
  • Fjord: Scandinavian
  • Nirvana: Indian
  • Saurkraut: German
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14y ago

The two languages with the most impact on English were Low German and French.

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11y ago

Anglo-Saxon (Germanic languages) and French.

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11y ago

The English language was influenced by Anglo-Saxon (Germanic languages) and French.

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Q: What two languages had the most impact on the English language?
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