Which language family includes English, German, and Dutch?

The language family that includes English, German, and Dutch is Germanic.

Germanic is a branch of the larger Indo-European language family. English, German, and Dutch are all West Germanic languages, descended from an earlier language known as Proto-Germanic. That ancestor was spoken in parts of northern Europe during the Iron Age.

Germanic languages are commonly divided into West Germanic, North Germanic, and East Germanic branches. English, German, and Dutch belong to the West Germanic branch, while Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic are North Germanic. East Germanic languages, including Gothic, are now extinct.

A common mix-up is assuming that Germanic languages must be closely tied to modern Germany. English has absorbed large amounts of vocabulary from French, Latin, and Greek, but its underlying ancestry and grammatical history remain Germanic. Afrikaans, Yiddish, Frisian, Scots, and Luxembourgish are also Germanic languages.