The relationship between English and Latin





English and Latin belong to the same language family (Indo-European language family) (English belongs to Germanic language family, while Latin belongs to Roman language family), so they are different in grammar.

 

Modern English writers tried to apply Latin grammar to English, for example, they imposed a rule prohibiting the use of adverbs between to and verbs, which failed to be successfully applied to everyday language. Even so, more than half of English vocabulary comes from Latin.

Many English words have evolved from Roman languages, such as French or Italian. And these Romance languages evolved from Latin,

For example: Latin: mercēs → French: merci → English: mercy.

 

Some have evolved directly from Latin,

For example: Latin: serēnus → English: serene.

 

Others are directly adopted without change,

For example: Latin: lārva → English: larva.

Thus, a considerable number of English words have evolved from Latin. In addition, some Latin languages have evolved from Greek,

E.g.: Greek: schǒlē → Latin: schǒla → old einglish: scōl → modern English: school.

 

After using so many loanwords in English, it really enriches the original monotonous English vocabulary.

 

Many people are used to calling A-Z "English letters", but in fact, they should be called "Latin letters" or "Roman letters". Because the twenty-six letters A-Z in English are Latin letters from Latin.

 

Language is the sum of words spoken by human beings. Words are produced later and are used to record language symbols. So it is not surprising that English is written in Latin letters, because language and writing are two different things.

 

 

Source from：

  1. http://www.oh100.com/peixun/xiaoyuzhong/278689.html 

  2. https://www.sohu.com/a/192066148_167657