Meryn Stol added this answer. Meryn Stol Here's a nice chart showing lexical distance between European languages: Source: http://elms.wordpress.com/2008...... In the chart you can see English' close ties with other Germanic languages, as well as its ties with Welsh and French. One thing to keep in mind when looking at this chart is that the distances between languages probably don't mean anything. They're just a convenient way to show them. For example you can see that German (GER) is about as far away from English as French (FRE), but the lexical distance of French to English is bigger than that of German, as indicated by the type of line that connects the two languages. See question on Quora - Meryn Stol