Quote:
Originally Posted by LaRondo
Answer
German is not a Latin based language. German is a West Germanic language
German is not a Latin based language because it is not a romance language. A Romance language is a language that is derived directly from Latin. They inlude Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. German does, however, have some words from Latin because the Germanic tribes interacted with the Latin speaking peoples when they overthrew Rome.
However, the great majority of Latin words in German were adopted from the time of the Renaissance onwards.
English is also a Germanic language. Many similarities can be seen between German and English, espcially with cognates. Sometimes, words only differ with a couple of letters.
Haus...House
Maus...Mouse
Hund...Dog (Hound)
There is a school of thought that says, by replacing German letter combinations with English letter combinations, you often come up with German words. See the examples above ("u" and "au" for the English "ou"). Although, this isn't always true, very often it works.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_German_a_Latin_based_language
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I think there are 6 or 7 major branches of languages. German, as I remeber comes from the germanic branch. Its source comes from northern India. The Latin branch includes those already listed. English is actually a hybrid language of german and french (latin). When the Normans, from France, invaded England the languages mixed together to an extent. Also, the Normans were decendents of the Vikings or North men (Norsemen). I think the Vikings language was also in the germanic tree.
http://www.danshort.com/ie/
http://www.krysstal.com/english.html
Tom