English is the unholy union of so many languages that answering this is pretty complex! One of the upsides of being an island nation; people imposing their culture on you from all sides. Structurally speaking, it's closer to the languages that the Germanic tribes spoke, so in that sense, yes. If you get into vocabulary, that's a whole different deal. We owe so many of the very words themselves to the Norman French thanks to the conquest in the 1000s -- French was the lingua franca of the king and the nobles, and eventually it diffused down. Some of the Plantagenet kings didn't even speak English at all; Richard I, for instance, just spoke French. It's hard to overstate the influence that the French had on the English, so far as the language is concerned. The very words "language" and "vocabulary" are gifts from the French, and from the Romans before that.
Based on structure alone, English is an Anglo-Saxon derivative. That's what distinguishes it from the Romance languages. However, when it comes to the words, whole different deal. I
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Thank you for that rich historical context, Connie! :) Unfortunately it puts me into a bit of a dilemma. I only ask because I plan to use the phrase, "seductive Anglo-Saxon derivative" in my college essay and wanted to know if it was correct. Rhetorically, I think it does just fine, but historically, it does leave out a lot.
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Based on structure alone, English is an Anglo-Saxon derivative. That's what distinguishes it from the Romance languages. However, when it comes to the words, whole different deal. I ( ... )
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