Video Lesson

The Germanic language family

family does English belong to? English is a Germanic language. That means English is is to languages such as German, Dutch, and Swedish. However, English speakers can't understa...

Course: School, work, and technologySection: About the English languageSubtitles: en

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24 subtitle cues

3:42

what language

3:42

family does English belong to? English

3:46

is a Germanic language. That means

3:49

English is is

3:50

to languages such as German, Dutch, and

3:54

Swedish. However, English speakers can't

3:58

understand these other languages. If I

4:01

hear German or Dutch, I don't understand

4:05

anything. English is related to these

4:08

languages, but they're very different.

4:11

For example, Americans who only speak

4:14

English can usually understand much more

4:18

Spanish than German. That seems strange

4:22

because English and Spanish are not

4:25

related, but English and German are

4:28

related. The reason why English speakers

4:31

can understand many words from Spanish,

4:35

French, or Italian is because these

4:38

languages have many cognates. Cognates

4:42

are words that have the same origin. For

4:46

example, in English, we have the word

4:49

patience, and in Spanish, this word is

4:52

paciencia. These words look very similar

4:56

because

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