Which language family includes the English language?

The English language belongs to the Indo-European language family.

More specifically, English is part of the Germanic branch, within the West Germanic group. Its closest major relatives include Scots, Frisian, Dutch, and German, although centuries of contact have given English substantial vocabulary from French, Latin, Norse, and many other languages.

Indo-European is a genealogical classification: its languages are believed to descend from a reconstructed common ancestor called Proto-Indo-European. The family includes major branches such as Germanic, Romance, Celtic, Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Armenian, and Albanian. English is therefore related, at a distant historical level, to languages as varied as Hindi, Persian, Spanish, Russian, and Greek.

A common mix-up is confusing a language family with a writing system or a modern region. Indo-European does not mean that every member is spoken only in Europe, nor does it describe English’s alphabet. English spread worldwide through migration, empire, education, trade, and media, while its family classification refers to ancestry, not present-day geography.