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:
“But it was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they
have a good thing, to make it too common.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“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)