ECONOMICS (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Germanic languages are English’s distant cousins, so to speak. The Germanic family itself has subgroups; English is in the West Germanic branch along with German, Dutch, Afrikaans, and a few others.

Detailed explanation-2: -The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world’s most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia.

Detailed explanation-3: -German belongs to the West Germanic group of the Indo-European language family, along with English, Frisian, and Dutch (Netherlandic, Flemish). The recorded history of Germanic languages begins with their speakers’ first contact with the Romans, in the 1st century bce.

Detailed explanation-4: -German is widely considered among the easier languages for native English speakers to pick up. That’s because these languages are true linguistic siblings-originating from the exact same mother tongue.