English

English belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. Spoken by about 470 million people throughout the world, English is the official language of about 45 nations. Today's English is the continuation of the language of the 5th-century Germanic invaders of Britain. No records exist of pre-invasion forms of the language. The language most closely related to English is the West Germanic language Frisian.

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