English- from Germany?

fairygirl   Sat May 06, 2006 11:40 am GMT
is the English language from Germany? I heard somewhere that English originally came from Germany. Isn't it from Britain?
Fredrik from Norway   Sat May 06, 2006 1:36 pm GMT
English comes from Angeln, which is a lovely area of rolling farmland and small beech forests with the blue Baltic in the bakcground, just south of the Danish-German border.
D6069LA   Sat May 06, 2006 2:43 pm GMT
It's erroneous to say "English originally came from Germany."

What you mean is that the ancestor of English came from what is today Northern Germany. Modern English as we know it today is the result of about 1500 years of English, British and American history.

As English is an Indo-European language, you might just as well say it originally came from Northern India.
Ved   Sat May 06, 2006 7:02 pm GMT
Actually, not Northern India, but Ukraine and Belarus. That's where the IE homeland most likely lay.
endrus   Sat May 06, 2006 8:38 pm GMT
Ved, I'll drink to that. I think you're right!
Englisc   Sun May 07, 2006 3:26 pm GMT
Sēo Englisce spræc (ēac sēo Ealde Englisce spræc oþþe Engle-Seaxisce spræc gehāten; on Nīwum Engliscum Old English oþþe Anglo-Saxon) is West Germanisc spræc, þe fram Englalande ārās. Hēo is gāstlēas spræc, and hēo hæfþ 0 folc in 2002.
Adam   Sun May 07, 2006 6:58 pm GMT
"English comes from Angeln, which is a lovely area of rolling farmland and small beech forests with the blue Baltic in the bakcground, just south of the Danish-German border. "

Absolute codswallop.

English comes from Anglo-Saxon, the language spoken by the Germanic invaders from modern day Germany and Denmark.

Despite the language and the nation taking their name from the Angles, the Angles were very much the minority group, outnumbered by the Saxons (from Saxony) and the Jutes.
Guest   Mon May 08, 2006 8:58 am GMT
You said it yourself; "the language spoken by the Germanic invaders from modern day Germany and Denmark", which makes it a language spoken and therefore from Germany.
BNP   Mon May 08, 2006 9:06 am GMT
English comes from England. Get over it. We spread it throughout the world and even forced the paddies to speak it.