[laurencerowe]

(To deep to reply to the sibling comment.)

> On the other hand English has copied enough from French to make it noticeably easier to pick up at the beginning than German. Some of that is simply being a more recent exchange with less time for linguistic drift, but these kinds of classifications are ultimately based on arbitrary criteria.

I think the difficulty with learning German is the complex grammar which is quite different from English. I suspect Dutch or Norwegian would be easier as their structure is more similar. And while there are more shared words in French, Spanish is normally considered easier to learn as it is more regular.

[Retric]

I agree. I may not have been clear enough when I said “at the beginning” but I was referring to shared vocabulary being more obvious vs German.

Perhaps a better way to say it is the overlap between Modern English and Old English is nearly useless when looking at an old text without prior training because of everything experienced linguistic drift.

Meanwhile more recent exchanges in either direction just pop out. The pop up here has buttons labeled “Accepter et continuer” which looks like accept and continue, and “S’abonner” which looks enough like Abandon to suggest what clicking on them does even if that’s the first exposure an English speaker has to French. https://www.lemonde.fr/

So IMO when looking at how closely related things are it’s worth remembering not just where something comes from but how much of that shared history is still around.