[gen220]

The grammatical structure of modern English is closer to Romance languages than Germanic languages.

You can convert many English sentences into a sensible (if not idiomatic) Spanish sentence by translating one word at a time.

German has not so forgiving been :)

[meepmorp]

> The grammatical structure of modern English is closer to Romance languages than Germanic languages.

I'm pretty sure that's not true.

[bagacrap]

from Wikipedia: "Of the Germanic family, English is exceptional in having predominantly SVO order instead of V2, although there are vestiges of the V2 phenomenon."

Romance languages like French and Spanish use SVO so I think it's correct to say English is like them.

An example given by wiki of German sentence structure translated directly to English:

"Before school played the children in the park soccer."

[lostcolony]

The wording you quote, "Of the Germanic family, English is exceptional", implies English is a Germanic language. One that borrows heavily from Latin, but still, a Germanic language.

Also from wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_influence_in_English "English is a Germanic language, with a grammar and a core vocabulary inherited from Proto-Germanic. However, a significant portion of the English vocabulary comes from Romance and Latinate sources."

English borrows from both quite heavily (for historical reasons listed there), to where I don't know that classifying it makes a lot of sense, but having dabbled with both, just from a language learning perspective, I'd say German definitely feels closer. Some simple counterexamples -

"What is that?" - "Was ist das?" vs "Que es eso". Same grammatic structure, but obviously very similiar words between German and English. Not so much Spanish. The Latin is "quid est".

"I see him" - "Ich sehe ihn" vs "Lo veo". English and German are very similar in both grammar and word; Spanish is very different from both, putting the direct object before the verb as it does, and not requiring the subject (yo). The Latin is "i videre eum".

[meepmorp]

I'm familiar with V2 and how English doesn't exhibit it. Look at the following weird deviations from how you'd say things in English

* I am hungry

* Ich bin hungrig

* It is raining today

* Es regnet heute

* Where is your house?

* Wo ist dein Haus?

It turns out that Germanic V2 is SVO in the case of simple declarative sentences! But what about other kinds of ordering, below the full sentence level?

Look at this, about the ordering of attributive adjectives and nouns in Spanish vs. German:

* un hombre alto

* una chica muy bonita

* ein großer mensch

* eine sehr schönes Mädchen

Like German, English places attributive adjectives before the nouns they modify.

Consider the possibility of eliding pronouns:

* Yo tengo hambre

* Tengo hambre

both are fine in Spanish.

* I am hungry

* Am hungry

Dropping the pronoun in English isn't ok in English, unless you're going to produce a fairly contrived context - like a text message, etc. It's not normal speech. In case you're curious, you can't drop the pronoun in German, either.

Language has lots of tiny facts that fit together in interesting ways.V