Will learning an European language help me learn English?

If you're especially focused on advanced words, then absolutely. There's a ton of overlap with Latin/Greek roots. I find higher-level stuff much easier to read in other languages than more basic stuff because the English is so similar. Latin/Greek dominate so much of it. French would be the most effective for the most applications and help out with some grammar in addition to vocab. Our grammar isn't quite the same as French, but it's much closer than it is to German. We acquired a ton of words directly from French, both basic and advanced. We also have many words from Latin that also went into French in other forms. As long as it doesn't confuse you, I'd go with French. Historically, German (*or Dutch, really*) would be more closely related, but today it's still very different. You'll get mostly very basic functional germanic words from that. I think it would be less helpful than most Romance languages.

Would it help? Sure. But it's a fairly inefficient manner to improve your English. The amount of work necessary to learn the 3rd language will be MOSTLY geared to learning it... as a third language. But yes, if you know an additional latin based language it will likely impact your understanding of English. And your existing understanding of English will enhance your experience in that language. But if you don't care about the 3rd language and just want to improve your English, studying the 3rd language seems inefficient. But sure, French, Spanish, German, and Italian (in that order - I think) could be helpful.

It kind of depends on what your native language is. But, generally, and I'm not a language expert this is just from my experience, English is a Germanic language so German has a lot of commonality with English, especially in usage and sentence structure. But English also has a ton of words borrowed from the Romance languages (most from French and Spanish) so they can be very helpful for vocabulary. Latin would help with spelling, but not much else. Maybe choose between German, French, and Spanish based on which one would be most helpful to you in the long run. Good luck!

The majority of English words either come from Old English or Old French. Old French words come from Latin, but most words that come to English directly from Latin are scientific words. If we're talking about the language the words came from before entering English, there's only Old French. I've learned Old English and I would like to learn Old French but I don't think either will help you learn English in a way that wouldn't require more effort than just learning English. I do recommend reading about the history of English, you may benefit from a quick read-through of Old English and Middle English grammar books, but to learn those forms of the language if knowing that language isn't the end goal is not worth it. As far as Old French goes, we borrowed words from it but an Old French grammar would be less useful than a Middle English grammar which would explain various rules for French-origin words vs English-origin words. Keep in mind that this all changed multiple times throughout history, and while we have Old, Middle, and Modern English, early forms of each are significantly different from later forms. For instance, Shakespeare wrote Early Modern English which is, while recognizable to Modern English speakers, vastly different in grammar and spelling. It's the pronunciation changes that make it Modern English and not Middle English, for while Shakespeare's writing looked like Middle English, a Middle English speaker would sound more like they are speaking German while Shakespeare would clearly be speaking English if with a very strong accent.

Kind of nitpicky but I’d rephrase your question to ask if learning “another” or “an additional” European language would help, seeing as English is absolutely a European language itself. Saying that English has roots in European languages is a pretty strange comment to make.

I had read that Norwegian is the closest language to modern English, as they split off from each other linguistically more recently than other European languages. I did some Norwegian courses in Duolingo and there was definitely some overlaps with vocabulary and grammar. I’ve been focusing more on French, though, because it’s my country’s other official language and I want to improve my proficiency

To some extent it can help, but nowhere near as much as if you spent the same time improving your English. Wanting to improve your English is not a good reason to learn another language. If you learn another language (for other reasons), then as a minor side benefit it will help you to learn more English.

definitely french, especially if you want help with advanced english vocabulary. a lot of higher register words in english are direct loans from french with very few false cognates. i’m a native english speaker and a language nerd. i’ve spent a lot of time with spanish, french is easier by FAR. there’s much more overlapping vocab, plus spelling and verb conjunction in french are super regular

Not really. German and English have similar vocabularies if you are a tenth-century shepherd. But English nouns lack inflection. French and Latin are also helpful for vocabulary, especially scientific. But, really, all the Romance languages are closer to Latin (and each other) than any of them is to English. Icelandic is the only other European language I know of that aspirates its “t” the way we do (and there are plenty of vocabulary similarities as well). Old Norse, although now dead, is said to be very useful for understanding English, but … that’s a lot of unnecessary work. A better idea is to just watch vast amounts of English-language TV. It’s cheap, it’s everywhere, and some of it is entertaining

I doubt it would be a considerable amount of help, given how long it would take, but it would definitely help at least a little! Especially with older English. I'm a native English speaker but I feel like I've gained a deeper understanding of English from learning other languages; there's definitely been times when I've only understood a word because I knew it in Spanish. And learning German and about the history of germanic languages has helped me understand why English grammar is formed the way it is. So if you are more interested in understanding grammar, I'd reccomend German, and if you're more interested in understanding vocabulary, I'd recommend French, though likely Spanish or Italian would be nearly just as beneficial. I found an interesting post [here](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.reddit.com/r/Spanish/comments/1hoap6m/cognates_that_are_true_but_less_known/&ved=2ahUKEwjtjOWp9OmMAxUpWkEAHV2PFZUQFnoECCQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1Yi3b5Pk66C4UpUawPXr6d) about rarer English-Spanish cognates that illustrates my point.

English IS a European language.

English has absorbed vocabulary from its Germanic roots, from Celtic languages, Latin, French, Greek, Spanish, Arabic, and a few others as well. Knowing Latin and Greek vocabulary can help, especially with technical, medical, scientific, or philosophy-related English vocabulary, many basic words, and prefixes and suffixes. But it’s probably not worth studying Latin and Greek rather than just learning these words as English words, and Latin and Greek grammar won’t help at all. Frysk (Western Frisian) is probably the closest European language to English. Is it worth learning Frysk to learn English? Almost certainly not, since you’ll be learning distinct grammar, spelling, vocabulary that might be close to older forms of English rather than contemporary, etc. Edit: I don’t mean to dissuade you from learning multiple languages! Far from it, I think that’s a great idea. You wil enrich your knowledge of each of them and learning different grammars is good exercise for the brain. But as to whether learning Latin or French will help you learn English more effectively or easily as opposed to just concentrating on English…I don’t think that’s why you should do it.

The best way to improve your English will be to spend your study time learning and using English, not studying a third language that's distantly related. If you want to study a third language for the sake of interest in that language or culture, go for it. You'll probably have some moments where you think "Oh, that's like English!".

I’d just focus on English. The opportunity cost of studying another language outside of English, is time studying English. It’d actually slow your progress

I'm a native English speaker, so I don't know how much this will help, but of the other languages I've studied, I found Spanish the easiest. Obviously there are differences in grammar, but there is a large vocabulary which is the same or almost the same, with obvious differences in pronunciation. I know theoretically that French should be closer, but the pronunciation of French makes it much harder for me. (And of course English is related to old French, not modern French, so maybe that also changes things.) Spanish is a phonetic language, once you learn the pronunciation rules, you can pretty much pronounce any word.

Basque will be of very little help. 

French and Latin share a ton of technical terms with English and I guess could hypothetically help you, but I wouldn’t do it unless you fully intend to learn the second language since other European languages are generally substantially divorced from English/Scots due to historic and geographical reasons. If your goal is to learn English, practice English.

If you don't yet speak English I fail to see how starting another language will improve it. That's one of the weirder ideas I've ever heard. Probably better to learn English first then when you learn another language you might find some similarities.

Everyone saying Latin won't help with English grammar is wrong imo. Studying Latin for many years was the best thing I did to improve my understanding of English grammar and rules. Learning Latin means learning how grammar works in *both* Latin and English, especially as you translate between them. The more advanced you get in Latin, the stronger your grammar skills become in both languages. I’m a native English speaker who already liked grammar, so Latin was fun—not overwhelming. I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re still getting comfortable with English, but if you're confident and want a fun way to sharpen your grammar and vocabulary, Latin’s a great choice. I also studied French (before Latin) and didn’t have great teachers, so I found it harder to connect to English. Latin was much easier and more useful. I’m now learning Italian, which Latin helps with, but I don’t think Italian helps much with English, so I wouldn't recommend learning that right now either.

English is a Germanic language with heavy influence from Romance languages, so yes, they would probably help. I'm a native English speaker, and that makes it easier to study both German and French. I recognize a lot of words. German sentence structures often sound like archaic English to me. French sentence structures are less familiar, but sometimes sound like English poetry. Both languages are complex in their own ways and have features that don't exist in English, though. 9w6

English absorbed more than vocabulary. The grammar and spelling also come from multiple languages. Understanding those at even a Level 1 "general knowledge" level would definitely be interesting and possibly useful. German, a Nordic language, Latin would be good places to start. French, too. But keep in mind that a lot (though certainly not all) of the influence was on the Old English and Old French days in the late Middle Ages.

In this case learn French, there are 60% of words of French origin in the English language 😉