When did the English Language form and branch off from the German?
340380
English is a West Germanic language, thus its closest relatives are Dutch, German, and Frisian.  Due to invasions and settlements by the North Germanic peoples (Danes, etc.), we have borrowed many words from them, such as skirt, sky, egg, etc.  \n\nThe earliest language which can be called English, dates to about the mid 5th century AD.  Before that, the 3 groups that colonized England and Southern Scotland (Jutes, Angles and Saxons) were living on the European mainland speaking their own Germanic dialects.  Germanic itself is just one branch of language that broke away from an earlier language, called Proto-Indoeuropean.
550643
The evolution of "like" from a simple preposition into an emphatic particle in Modern English is just part of the natural evolution of language.  Every language changes with each new generation of speakers.  Old structures fall by the wayside and new structures take their place.  It's been going on for 100,000 years at least.  It's just part of the process.  "Like" has evolved into three distinct things:  First, the verb "like" as in "I like steak".  Second, the preposition as in "The second day was like the first day".  And the newest manifestation, the emphatic particle as in "I thought, like, he is so cute".  Where the evolution goes from here is anyone's guess.  Emphatic particles often evolve into either nominative or accusative case endings, but the position of "like" will have to become fixed first.
1153096
Well English...Started from Anglo-Saxon.Some words are borrowd or adopted. Some were created by accident.
824390
Can't be done.  You'd have to say what origins you are including, not just which ones you are excluding.  There's really no such thing as English, historically speaking.  That's a comparatively recent development.  All the way back to way before Chaucer, which is used as an exercise in reading really old English, there was Latin mixed in.  There were words from Celtic, Angles, Saxons, and plenty of others.  You're about a thousand years too late to sort them out now.
469451
In large part because of its mixed history.  It is, at base, a Germanic langauge (Anglo-saxon) which then became mixed with a Northern Germanic language (with the Viking invaders), and then with a Romance language (with the Norman invasion.)  There are dollops of other languages as well.  This melange has created a language with inconsistent rules and practices (exaggerated by the fact that some parts of the language have evolved over time more than others, and because so many different parts of the world now speak English.)
25984
Actually it was used in the 'mother-tongue'.  Check the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and you will see that use as early as 1348.  It is now rare in England but quite regular in America.\n\nThe OED can be consulted online if you have an account or use it from a library/school.  Otherwise. use the book in a library.\n\nThomas Talboy, PhD, Director\nUbiquity International, LLC\nExperience. Explore. Embrace the World.(TM)\nhttp://www.ubiquityinternational.com
71297
Can you clarify your question?\n\nThe etymology of English and England is from the word Angles, Angles being the tribe of west germanic peoples who invaded/settled/conquered the islands of the British Isles.  England is derived from the germanic way of expressing the place where Angles occupy: Land of the Angles or Angle Land.\n\nEnglish is the language that is spoken in England just like Deutsch is the language spoken in Deutschland (German/Germany).
319314
The English language, as it is today, is an almagamation of several different sources, the main influences being Latin, thanks to the Roman Occupation of England for a few centuries!!\n\nCeltic, Saxon, Norman, Slavic and Germanic have also had their influence on Britain, and the usual description of English is ANGLO-SAXON.\n\nHope this helps without going too much into history and all that crap.
436128
German and English are very similar to each other. It's similar to learning a new language.
10355
Because of the long and complicated influence from other languages as well as language 'evolution'. English is a germanic language. In 1066, Then french invaded england and we have a huge romance language influence from that. Then we have arabic words, indian words, it goes on and on. Plus some 'olde englishe' words were pronounce differently.  For instance I believe knight didn't have a silent 'k' originally. There have been many other vowel shifts and consonant additions/deletions that leave us with the mess we have today
88294
Latin - who knows . . . is the answer searchable?\n\nI cheated . . . looked it up . . . \n\nOld English (449 - 1066 CE)\n\nThe Old English language (also called Anglo-Saxon) dates back to 449 CE. The Celts had been living in England when the Romans invaded. Although they invaded twice, they did not conquer the Celts until 43 CE and Latin never overtook the Celtic language. The Romans finally left England in 410 CE as the Roman Empire was collapsing, leaving the Celts defenseless. Then the Germanic tribes from the present-day area of Denmark arrived. The four main tribes were the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians. These tribes set up seven kingdoms called the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy that included: Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Wessex, Sussex, Essex, and East Anglia. Four dialects were spoken in these kingdoms: West Saxon, Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian. The Celts moved north to Scotland, west to Ireland and south to France, leaving the main area of Britain.
481693
I think it was Noah Webster who when writing his dictionary decided to simplify several spellings in the English Language.  \nSome took, some didn't.  Some even changed the way Brits and Canadians and Aussies spell the word (musick is now music for instance).  \n\nI have never heard of a concentrated effort by the American Government to differentiate their language from British English and it doesn't sound like something that a limited federal government (pre-civil war) would really want to do.     More likely, English, given its ability to evolve quickly branched off because people liked the spelling in the US and a different spelling in the UK.
433204
English is an Anglo-Frisian language brought to Britain in the 5th Century AD by Germanic settlers from various parts of northwest Germany. The original Old English language was subsequently influenced by two successive waves of invasion. The first was by speakers of languages in the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who colonised parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries. The second wave was of the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Norman (an oïl language closely related to French).\n\nAccording to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, around the year 449, Vortigern, King of the British Isles, invited the Angles to help him against the Picts. In return, the Angles were granted lands in the south-east. Further aid was sought, and in response came Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. The Chronicle talks of a subsequent influx of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms. Modern scholarship considers most of this story to be legendary and politically motivated.\n\nThese Germanic invaders dominated the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants, whose languages survived largely in Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland. The dialects spoken by the invaders formed what would be called Old English, which resembled some coastal dialects in what are now north-west Germany and the Netherlands. Later, it was strongly influenced by the North Germanic language Norse, spoken by the Vikings who settled mainly in the north-east (see Jórvík).\n\nFor the 300 years following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Norman kings and the high nobility spoke only Anglo-Norman. A large number of Norman words were assimilated into Old English. The Norman influence reinforced the continual evolution of the language over the following centuries, resulting in what is now referred to as Middle English.\n\nDuring the 15th century, Middle English was transformed by the Great Vowel Shift, the spread of a standardised London-based dialect in government and administration, and the standardising effect of printing. Modern English can be traced back to around the time of William Shakespeare.
313279
OY.  Um, the English Renaissance (circa late 1400's) or the beginning of the Italian Renaissance (circa 1350).\n\nOkay, Old English 450-1066.  450 marks the Invasion of the Romans.  1080, the Battle of Hastings and thus the French influence.  \n\nMiddle English 1066-1449 --- French influence via the Normans.  (by the way, Chaucer is the main man when it comes to Middle English --- you can see it in the way he uses French in his works --- and while it may be possible, I highly doubt anyone has done a translation of CT into Old English --- esp considering the French words had no way of existing pre-French invasion.)\n\nModern English 1450-2006  --- Discovery of the New World, and more importantly, the printing press which stabilized literature.\n\nSo, the English spoken during the Renaissance is the same as now.  HOWEVER, you're sitting there thinking, like hell it is, and you'd be right.  It has evolved, changed and so forth.  \n\nShakespeare's English is what they spoke during the Renaissance.  He will be your best bet; however, keep in mind, the rhythm he writes in is not always what was spoken.  The iambic pentameter was a fancy way to write, and a stylized way to speak, very difficult to achieve, naturally.  \n\nThat being the case, you're going to find a lot of poetry from the Renaissance and not a lot of prose.  \n\nIn college consider taking Old English and Middle English courses to see how the English language developed. The direct answer is that we speak very similarly to the way they spoke then.  The changes aren't as drastic as in the first two periods (have you ever read Beowulf in Old English---it's a bear and not many people can do it).\n\nSo, until you get into some upper division English courses (or even MA and PhD work) start by picking up a Norton Anthology of English.  You can find them hella cheap on the internet.  It doesn't have to be the latest edition.  The works don't change, just the way they're ordered in the text and some commentary about the work---maybe a shred of new info.  I bought my fifth edition recently for about 5 bucks; however, the 8th is currently selling (the complete set) for about $130.  \n\nKey notes to help you further.  The beginning of Modern English used thou, thee, and thy much more.  That is like tu versus usted i espanol.  Tu is informal whereas usted is formal.  Take the popular "Our Father" for example.  Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done...\n\nThy is a show of closeness and familiarity.  If the scholars/monks translated it as [your] it would show a rigid formality uncommon in a father/child setting.  \n\nIf I can be of any further assistance, let me know.
919434
not so very long ago huge numbers of people in southern and central europe spoke latin.\n\nbut as the people in spain began to get more interested in talking to each other than in talking to italians, their language slowly evolved from latin to spanish.\n\nthe same thing happened in france, italy, romania.\n\nit is impossible to preserve a language against the wish of its speakers: people use a language to communicate with the people they want to talk to.\n\nit is just as impossible to stop new languages from evolving. a thousand years ago there was no recognisable english language, but as the need for one developed it appeared.\n\nthere are already dialects of english which are nearly unintelligible to speakers of the standard dialect (jamaicans and nigerians have forms of english which are on the verge of becoming separate languages).\n\nyou cannot tell a language what to do:- it tells you.
270052
what a stupid question!  What's Germany speaking English got to do with anything?  The war was due to economic issues and rampant German militarism.   I don't think speaking English instead of German would have made a blind bit of difference.
74984
Any of the Romance languages are likely the easiest, since they have many cognates (similar sounding words that mean the same thing) and usually have fairly simple grammar. Of them, Spanish is probably the easiest, and definitely the most useful. German would be a close second, however, since its grammar influenced English so closely and has many cognates as well.