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Hello everyone.

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Welcome to the Langfocus channel,

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and my name is Paul.

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Today, I’m going to answer the question

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“Is English really a Germanic language?”.

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If you’ve seen any of my videos on Germanic languages,

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like my Afrikaans video, like my Dutch video, like my German video,

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or like my North Germanic languages video,

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then you probably saw that English is also a Germanic language.

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But a lot people write comments expressing
some confusion over this:

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they write things like “Paul, are you sure
it’s a Germanic language?

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Are you sure it’s not a Romance language?”.

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Well, that’s a good question.

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If a native English speaker who had never learned
another language before had a look at a page of French

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and then had a look at
a page of German or Dutch,

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they would probably be able to understand
more of the page of French.

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Or, if they had a look at a page of Spanish
or a page of Italian,

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they would probably be able to pick out a lot of words
that they recognize.

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But, on the other hand, if they looked at
a page of Dutch or German,

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they probably wouldn’t be able to pick out
as many

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without deciphering the words a little bit first.

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So in that case, why is English a Germanic language
and not a Romance language?

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In the field of linguistics, languages are categorized
according to their genetic relationship.

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Genetic relationship means that they have a common ancestor,

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and therefore, they have some common features
that distinguish them from other groups of languages.

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This type of genetic relationship between languages can commonly
be seen in the grammar and syntax of the language.

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But, the current vocabulary of the language is not really
taken into account in its categorization.

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Even when a language has a huge number of loan words
and its vocabulary changes a lot,

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that does not change the categorization of that language.

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So, because English developed from Proto-Germanic,
it is a Germanic language,

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despite massive changes that have taken place
in its vocabulary.

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The vocabulary of English has been highly influenced
by Romance languages-

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Romance meaning Latin and any language
that has developed from Latin,

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like French, Spanish, Italian, etc.

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So, how much has it been influenced?

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Well, English vocabulary is 26% Germanic,
and it’s 29% French

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--wait, you’re telling me that there’s more French vocabulary
than Germanic vocabulary,

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even though it’s a Germanic language?!

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That’s odd.

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Oh, but wait, there’s also 29% Latin vocabulary.

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So, that means, together, 58% of English vocabulary
comes from Romance languages?!

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Wow, that’s more than I thought!

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Another 6% comes from Greek,

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another 4% comes from other languages,

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and 4% comes from proper names,

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I can’t really think of any vocabulary
that comes from proper names,

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aside from...

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“randy”…

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So if we ignore the origins of English
and its grammar and syntax

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and just focus on the vocabulary for a minute,

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then English is largely a Romance language.

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How did so much Romance vocabulary enter English?

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Much of the French vocabulary entered English
after the Norman Conquest of 1066.

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The Normans spoke a regional French dialect
called “Old Norman” or “Norman French”.

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The upper classes in England spoke French
for around 300 years.

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English was influenced by the Norman French dialect,
but also by Parisian French

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due to its prestige and cultural influence
in the following centuries.

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Huge amounts of French vocabulary entered English,

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and it lost much of its Old English vocabulary.

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But in many cases, there are pairs of equivalent
Germanic and French vocabulary.

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But within those pairs, there’s often a slightly different meaning
or usage for the Germanic word and for the French word.

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An interesting example are the pairs of words representing animals,

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vs. foods that come from those animals.

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The animals are represented by Germanic words,

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and the foods are represented by French loanwords.

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For example, “cow” comes from Old English “cū”,

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but “beef” comes from French “boeuf”.

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“Pig” comes from Old English “picga”,

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but “pork” comes from French “porc”,

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but I don’t know what the pronunciation would’ve been
like in Norman French.

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“Sheep” comes from Old English “sceap”,

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but “mutton” comes from Old French “mouton”.

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“Snail” comes from Old English “snægl”,

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and “escargot” comes from Norman French “escargot”.

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French also influenced English
because of its huge cultural influence on Europe

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from the Renaissance period to the end of the 19th century,

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and even now to some extent.

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But it’s not just French,

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there’s also a lot of Latin vocabulary.

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Some Latin entered Germanic dialects
in their early days,

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through contact with the Roman empire.

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On top of that, some Christian missionaries were present
in Britain in the 6th and 7th centuries,

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and they introduced some Latin religious vocab into English.

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Many Latin words were also borrowed
during the Renaissance period,

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and also during the scientific revolution
of the 17th and 18th centuries,

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when many new words were “coined”,

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“coined” meaning “newly created”.

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New words were coined from Latin roots, prefixes,
and suffixes to represent new concepts in science,

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in technology, and in industry.

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So, English is a Germanic language which absorbed a huge number
of French and Latin words?

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Yes, basically, but some people have a different theory:

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some people think that English is actually a creole language;

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there’s something called
“The Middle English Creole Hypothesis”.

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There are big differences between Old English
and Middle English;

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of course there was the importing
of lots of French vocabulary,

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but that alone does not make it a creole language.

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But, there were other changes to the grammar
of English which became highly simplified.

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There was a lot of simplification,
like the loss of most noun cases,

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so that--aside from the possessive form with ’s (apostrophe s)
and the plural form

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--most nouns in English don’t have any inflection.

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Also, adjectives used to have inflection,
but that disappeared, too.

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(Side note): The word “inflection” means:

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“changes to a word to represent different
grammatical categories”.

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For example, the word “cat”
and “the cat’s paw”.

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Here, the ’s (apostrophe s) is a kind of inflection
to show possession,

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and we have 1 mouse, but 2 mice.

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So here, the word is inflected to show plural.

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So let’s take a simple phrase like “The good king”
and look at it in Old English;

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in Old English, notice that all three words
in this phrase can change:

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in the nominative case “Se goda cyning”,

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in the accusative case "þone gōdan cyning”,

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in the genitive case “þæs gōdan cyninges”,

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in the dative case “þǣm gōdan cyning”.

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So the definite article changes, the adjective changes,

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and the noun changes depending on the case.

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But, the article and adjective also change
depending on the gender,

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and the case endings are different
depending on the gender.

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Let’s look at a similar phrase, “The good queen”.

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“Seo gode cwén”,

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“þā gōdan cwéne”,

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“þǣre gōdan cwéne”,

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“þǣre gōdan cwéne”.

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Notice the different feminine form of the definite article
and the adjective.

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This is just an example of the grammatical complexity
of Old English,

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so you can imagine how much it became simplified.

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By the Middle English period,
most of these forms had disappeared or merged together.

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So now, we just have a genitive case,
and the others form a common case.

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This is the type of simplification
that happens when Creoles arise,

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so it’s very possible that Old English
underwent a process of creolization,

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inserting lots of French vocabulary into an Old English substrate,
or underlying structure.

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But there might have been a different reason
for that simplification of English;

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some people don’t believe in the creole hypothesis,

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and they point to things like some of the irregular forms
that still exist in English,

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like irregular verbs or irregular plural forms.

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In a typical creole language,
those forms would have been regularized.

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But, of course, creolization is not an all-or-nothing process;

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it’s possible that English was partially creolized.

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Well, let’s look at a couple of sentences in English,
and let’s look at the influences we can find,

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and let’s see if there’s more Germanic
or more Romance influence.

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his one’s a newspaper headline:
“Trump, pushing immigration plan,

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meets with family of woman killed in 2007”.

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“Push”: this word comes from Old French “poulser”,
or Modern French “pousser”.

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“Immigration”: this word comes from Latin “immigratum”.

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“Plan”: this word comes from the French word “plan”,
which means “map” or “ground plan”.

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“Meet”: this comes from Old English “metan”.

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“With”: this comes from Old English “wið”.

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“Family”: this comes from the Latin “familia”,
according to the source I used,

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but there’s also the French word “famille”,
which I suppose could be the source.

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“Of”: this word comes from
the Old English “æf”, or “of”.

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“Woman”: this comes from
Old English “wimman”, or “wiman”.

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“Kill”: this might come from
the Old English “cwellan”, “to quell”.

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“In”: this word comes from Latin.

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So, out of those ten words, five are Germanic,
and five are Romance words.

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But let’s have a look at a more casual sentence,

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because I have a feeling that newspaper vocabulary
tends toward Romance vocabulary more than common speech.

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“I had lunch with my friend and we read some books”.

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“I”: this is Germanic, comes from Old English “iċ”.

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“Had”: this is also Germanic,
it comes from Old English “habban”.

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“Lunch”: the origin of this one is vague,

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but it seems to be from a Modern English dialect word.

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“With”: this is from Old English “wið”.

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“My”: this is Germanic, it comes from
Middle English “mi”, or “min”.

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“Friend”: this comes from Old English “freond”.

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“And”: this comes from Old English “and”, or “ond”.

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“We”: this comes from Old English “we”.

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“Read”: this comes from Old English
“rædan”, or “redan”.

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“Some”: this comes from Old English “sum”.

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“Book”: this comes from Old English “boc”.

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So this time, all of the words,
or almost all of the words, are Germanic.

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So it’s interesting that the majority of English vocabulary
comes from French or from Latin,

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but in the most commonly used words in casual speech,

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there tends to be more Germanic vocabulary.

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This is a good argument in favor of English being classified
as a Germanic language.

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So, do I think that English should be classified
as a Germanic language?

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Well, by a linguist’s criteria, yes,

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but most people don’t really care
about a linguist’s criteria,

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they just care about the practical application,
the practical use of the language.

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And in practice, I think the vocabulary
is a very important element of the language,

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so I think it’s fair to say that, in practice,

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English is a hybrid language:
it’s partly Germanic, part Romance.

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But, that’s my personal conclusion.

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I’d like to know what you think:

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do you think that English should be considered
a Germanic language,

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or do you think it seems
more like a Romance language?

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Leave your answer in the comments down below.

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Be sure to follow Langfocus on Twitter,
on Facebook, and on Instagram.

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Those are places to kind of keep in touch with me
between videos,

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on those social media channels.

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especially these people whose names are on the screen,

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Thank you for watching, and have a nice day.

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[Groovy, moderately fast-paced electronic music

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with drum set: ”Urban Tough”
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