Which language is the most similar to English?

[mostafa]

Which language is the most similar to English language?
I've heard about similarity of Danish to English and in addition I guess about Irish language. But I'm sure about none of them! Can you answer my question please?

[Iversen]

From a historical perspective the language closest to English is Frisian, which is spoken in the Netherlands and by a few persons along the German North Sea coast - but since the Norman invasion in 1066 English has developed so far away from Frisian that you wouldn't be able to see why precisely those two should be related. Frisian look more like Dutch now, and English ... well, it seems familiar to us because we have spend so much time with it, but most of the vocabulary has been imported from French (and to some extent Latin), and the grammar has drifted into no man's land.

As for Danish and other Germanic languages: the predecessor of Modern English was Anglosaxon, which was based on dialects spoken by the invaders of Britain around 500. These people came from the area from Saxony in Germany to Jutland in Denmark, and later some Danish was added during the viking era around the year 1000. But their center was in York, and Wilhelm the Bastard (Conqueror) got most of the population there slaughtered when they didn't just accept his rule, so that broke the link between the Scandinavian languages and English. Since then English (with its own dialects) has been on its own.

I don't study Irish now, but I flirted with it a couple of years ago. And I must say that there are few languages in Europe which feel more different from English than Irish.

[galaxyrocker]

Which language is the most similar to English language?
I've heard about similarity of Danish to English and in addition I guess about Irish language. But I'm sure about none of them! Can you answer my question please?

Well, it's certainly not Irish. Irish is a Celtic language, related to Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton. Some scholars posit the Celtic languages are themselves most closely related to the Italic ones (which includes the Romance languages) in a branch called Italo-Celtic.

But, to your original question, the answer is likely Scots. Though, if you only consider that a 'dialect' (I don't; I find true Scots, as opposed to Scottish English, to be mostly unintelligible), it is going to be Frisian, like Iverson stated.

[Serpent]

Scots is even closer than Frisian.

[emk]

[EDIT: Crossposted with several people.]

The other candidate is lowland Scots (which shouldn't be confused with Scottish Gaelic). There's a dialect continuum that runs from British English, through Scottish English, and into Scots. The most extreme forms of Scots can be pretty unintelligible for standard English speakers. Here's a short excerpt from a Scots poem to give you an idea of what it looks like:

Ane darkened nicht, as a rid moon rose fu
An ae cauld eerie blast, wi out warnin came thro
Ah wis oan the auld gate thit gangs thro the glen
When biddin guid nicht tae the teugh haunts o men

An "Aye" tis true, thit ah'd haen a sowpe or twa
Tho neer tae the point thit Ah'd been proppin up the bar
Sae, wi a wee heid oan, ah wis richt tae tak the gate
Tho neer did ah ken whit haly hell lay in wait

There's a famous poem "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns which essentially code-switches between standard English and Scots. It contains the famous lines "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley." The second line is clearly not standard English.

But is Scots really a separate language? There's no final answer to that question. It depends entirely on how you define "separate language." But if you get all the way out along the dialect continuum, it's certainly possible to find texts which I can only read slowly and with great difficulty—it certainly requires far more concentration and guesswork for me than reading French.

[Montmorency]

From a historical perspective the language closest to English is Frisian, which is spoken in the Netherlands and by a few persons along the German North Sea coast - but since the Norman invasion in 1066 English has developed so far away from Frisian that you wouldn't be able to see why precisely those two should be related. Frisian look more like Dutch now, and English ... well, it seems familiar to us because we have spend so much time with it, but most of the vocabulary has been imported from French (and to some extent Latin), and the grammar has drifted into no man's land.

As for Danish and other Germanic languages: the predecessor of Modern English was Anglosaxon, which was based on dialects spoken by the invaders of Britain around 500. These people came from the area from Saxony in Germany to Jutland in Denmark, and later some Danish was added during the viking era around the year 1000. But their center was in York, and Wilhelm the Bastard (Conqueror) got most of the population there slaughtered when they didn't just accept his rule, so that broke the link between the Scandinavian languages and English. Since then English (with its own dialects) has been on its own.

Not quite the same issue, but I found this quite interesting when I came across it for the first time the other day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse%E2%80%93Gaels

(And although Norwegian and Scottish Gaelic are completely unrelated linguistically (as far as I know), it does not seem too fanciful to me to hear something of the singing tones of Norwegian among the sounds of modern Gaelic, e.g.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b075556t
(more programmes here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radionangaidheal/p ... les#on-now )

[Serpent]

Well, I wouldn't say completely unrelated. Both are Indo-European

[Elexi]

Norn was spoken on Orkney and Shetland until the seventeenth century, so its not impossible that the two have inter-blended in those islands.

In fact one regularly reads/hears of Shetlanders expressing anti-Scots Gaelic sentiment on the basis that the people are culturally (if not linguistically) Norn - e.g. http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2016/02/ ... g-says-msp

(Although I don't want this to get political)

[Brian]

But is Scots really a separate language? There's no final answer to that question. It depends entirely on how you define "separate language." But if you get all the way out along the dialect continuum, it's certainly possible to find texts which I can only read slowly and with great difficulty—it certainly requires far more concentration and guesswork for me than reading French.

As a Scot myself, I like the idea of Scots being a separate language but in reality most people here speak Scottish English liberally peppered with Scots vocabulary.

In my opinion, Old Scots should be regarded as a language in its own right but it doesn't really exist as a living language any more.

[Alphathon]

But is Scots really a separate language? There's no final answer to that question. It depends entirely on how you define "separate language." But if you get all the way out along the dialect continuum, it's certainly possible to find texts which I can only read slowly and with great difficulty—it certainly requires far more concentration and guesswork for me than reading French.

As a Scot myself, I like the idea of Scots being a separate language but in reality most people here speak Scottish English liberally peppered with Scots vocabulary.

In my opinion, Old Scots should be regarded as a language in its own right but it doesn't really exist as a living language any more.

I'd mostly agree, but here in the north east it certainly exists in rural areas and fishing villages (although it is under severe pressure and will probably not last like this for much more than a generation or two). What is spoken here is definitely more than Standard English + Scots vocabulary.