Why is English not considered a Romance “language if ~60-80% of words come from latin?
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Because language families are based on far more than vocabulary. Loanwords exist everywhere. English isn’t even the worst; Japanese borrows even more extensively from Chinese and English than English does from French and Latin.
English is Germanic because its underlying structure and core vocabulary is Germanic and it descended from the North Sea Germanic languages that included Old Frisian and Saxon along with Old English.
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I don’t know where that stat comes from, but the Latin words (and the French ones) got imported into an existing Germanic language. That doesn’t change the origin of the language. The *grammar* and structure of English is still very Germanic, which tells us more about what family tree it’s part of than just the amount of loanwords over the centuries
It’s because languages are grouped by origin, not by vocabulary. English is considered a Germanic language because we can trace a direct line through its ancestors back to Germanic. It’s true that there are now lots and lots English words that originated from Latin (some directly borrowed from Latin, others indirectly borrowed via Romance languages like French). Most of those entered English long after it was well on its way to becoming the language that we use now, though.
Old English seems more like German than any Romance language. It wasn’t until later, when the Normans took over that a lot of French and Latin words were added and caused the look and sound of the English language to seem a lot less German.
English is a West Germanic language (*similar to Dutch and Frisian*) but with a lot of Romance words added later.
Explain – Latin
Like – Germanic
I – Germanic
Am – Germanic
Five – Germanic
Why – Germanic
Is – Germanic
English – Germanic
Not – Germanic
Considered – Latin
A – Latin
Romance – Latin
Language – Latin
If – Germanic
Sixty – Germanic
Eighty – Germanic
Percent – Latin
Of – Germanic
Words – Germanic
Come – Germanic
From – Germanic
Latin – Latin
I think your 60-80 is high. I wonder where that came from?
English got a lot of French vocabulary mixed in after the Norman conquest in 1066, but it was mostly used by the upper class for centuries. Romance languages (like French) developed directly from Latin. Language history is fun and interesting. I recommend John McWhorter’s early books.
The word origins don’t matter. The grammar is what matters.
For just one example, in Romance languages the adjectives come after the noun. E.g., “carro azul”. But in English and German, the adjective comes first. “blue car” or “blaues auto”.
German is a lot more similar than you think.
Learn the letter pronunciation differences and you’ll go a long way in German just by sounding out words, even if they’re not spelled the same.
This guy does an excellent job explaining. https://youtu.be/VebSZrHmsI4?si=FbRCASiicBBb-GXI
Ooh, something I know about!!
Languages change over time. Given enough time, they become totally new languages (though the line for that is blurry.) For example, Old English changed into Middle English, which changed into Modern English. Old English itself comes from a language called Proto-Germanic, which comes from Proto-Indo-European.
Using this, we can construct a (simplified) family tree for Modern English: PIE > Proto-Germanic > Old English > Middle English > Modern English. Obviously, this is glossing over a lot of details, but it’s good enough for our purposes.
Compare this to Spanish. Spanish’s family tree would look something like: PIE > Proto-Italic > Latin > Old Spanish > Modern Spanish. (Linguists rarely speak of “Middle Spanish,” but note that Old Spanish and Middle English were spoken at the same time.)
Because Latin is part of the “family tree” of Spanish, we call it a Romance language. Because it’s not part of the “family tree” of English, we don’t call it a Romance language. Middle English did take a lot of loanwords from French, but it didn’t *come from* French, any more than Spanish comes from English because of loanwords like “sándwich” or “básquetbol.”
[Side note: You’ll notice that both English and Spanish start with Proto-Indo-European. Other languages that come from PIE include Hindi, Russian, and Farsi. If you want to learn more about it, I highly recommend the book *The Horse, the Wheel, and Language*—it’s fascinating, and I could talk about this for hours!]
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