Germanic Family:
The Germanic language, including English, constitutes one branch of the Indo-European language family. It has three branches, i.e., North Germanic, East Germanic and West Germanic.
The North Germanic branch includes the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Faroese). The East Germanic language (Gothic) also existed in history, but they are now extinct, i.e., the languages are no longer spoken in daily activities by anyone in the world. The main Eastern Germanic language was Gothic. It was used to be spoken in Crimea (Ukraine).
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The language died because the descendants of Gothic tribe were converted to other languages through political dominance.
The West German branch of the Indo-European language includes German, Yiddish, Anglo-Saxon, Modern English, Old Saxon, Dutch and Flemish languages.
Out of the West Germanic languages, English is the most widely used language. It has its origin around 1,500 years back.
The land, now known as England, was invaded by the Angles, Jutes and Saxons. The name England is derived from the Angles, and the English language is a fusion of languages spoken by the three tribes.
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English is thus a Germanic language and it shares many structural similarities with other Germanic languages.
Prior to the invasion of British Isles by Angles and Saxon tribes, Celtic was the main language of the peoples but later on they were pushed to the remote areas of Scotland and Wales.
English was diffused around the world through the establishment of colonies in North and South America, Australia, New Zealand Africa and Asia. At present, English is the lingua franca, one of the important languages of international communication.
The Latin Linguistic Family:
The Latin linguistic group is also known as Romance languages. The main languages of this group are French, Italian, Provencal, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian.
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The rise in importance of the city of Rome was paralleled by a spread of the Latin language.
As the Roman armies occupied the greater parts of Europe and Asia Minor, they brought the Latin language with them. The languages spoken by the natives were extinguished or suppressed in favour of the conquerors.
The five most important contemporary Romance (Latin) languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian.
An examination of a physical map of Europe provides ample evidence for the development of separate Romance languages, because the Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian language regions are separated from each other by mountains.
In fact, mountains serve as a strong barrier to communications between people living on opposite sides.
Like English, the Latin languages, especially Spanish and Portuguese, have achieved worldwide prominence because of the colonial activities of their speakers
Over 80 per cent of the speakers of these two languages live outside of Europe, mainly in Central and South America. French is the language of France and it has been adopted as a national language in Switzerland, Canada and several countries of Africa.
Italian language has its major concentration in Italy, Sicily, Switzerland and some islands in the Mediterranean Sea, while Romanian is the official language of Romania.