1433: Definitions for Language Families Nov 13, 2018

English and West Frisian are in the same language family as they are the most similar languages to each other, but Old English would have been a lot more similar. Moreover, around 60% of English's vocabulary is Romantic in origin, and yet English is not considered to have descended from Romance languages. This is somewhat of a quirk of the definition for language families as languages are not considered to be part of the same language family if one is the origin but no longer is spoken. Moreover, the grammar and syntax is far more important for determining the language family than vocabulary.