The English languages (also called the Anglic languages or Insular Germanic languages) are a group of linguistic varieties including Old English and the languages descended from it. These include Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English; Early Scots, Middle Scots, and Modern Scots; and the now extinct Yola and Fingalian in Ireland.
English-based creole languages are not generally included, as only their lexicon, not their linguistic structure, comes from English.
| Old English (Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, West Saxon) | |||||
Famous quotes containing the words english and/or languages:
“It is hard to believe that England is so near as from your letters it appears; and that this identical piece of paper has lately come all the way from there hither, begrimed with the English dust which made you hesitate to use it; from England, which is only historical fairyland to me, to America, which I have put my spade into, and about which there is no doubt.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Wealth is so much the greatest good that Fortune has to bestow that in the Latin and English languages it has usurped her name.”
—William Lamb Melbourne, 2nd Viscount (1779–1848)