What language is the parent language of English?

Answer 1

English is commonly referred to as a mongrel language, in that it doesn't have on specific parent language, but has evolved over the years from many different languages.

In geographical terms, Old and then Middle English were the languages spoken in much (though not nearly all) of Britain before Modern English (post-1470ish), Early Modern English being the oldest language that most people would be able to recognise as English.

Old English was mostly a mixture of Celtic languages and Germanic languages, such as Saxon, which were brought to England by settlers; over time Britain was conquered by rather a lot of different cultures, introducing elements of Norman, Norse, Latin and French. Later on some words were brought back by English explorers from countries such as India and Africa, however these had quite small impacts compared to the others mentioned.

In modern times, English has continued to assimilate parts of other languages. The effect of the British Empire spreading English to so many countries, and more recently of global communications such as the internet making English much more widely spoken, has been even more evolution in the language. American English has picked up bits from Spanish and Jewish languages, South African English has lots of Afrikaans elements to it, and so on.

Despite all this, the "official" answer to your question is usually that English is a West Germanic language.