Updated 1 year ago
English is the language with the most even mix of the two most powerful European civilizations, Latin (including French here) and Germanic (big family, also includes Old Norse) Our vocabulary is both “sky” – entertaining quite high-minded and erudite concepts, like a medieval monk – and “earth” – guttural and real, like the sounds a Viking made while killing the monk.
Ironically, “sky” is from Old Norse. “Celestial” may be a better word choice
So in this sense English is the most crazy quilt of them all. As such, it is fitting as the global common tongue. In spirit it is most similar to the martial, seminal, and proliferating Proto Indo-European, but in actual structure, Lithuanian is actually the closest, then other Slavic languages.
After English, in this regard, Dutch/Flemish are distant seconds, as they didn’t have their William the Conqueror moment. The Normans, like the Kievan Rus, went native and were a linguistic drop in the ocean in respect to spreading Old Norse.
