Latin is an ancient Indo-European language; that is, it is one of the oldest known members of a large family of languages. It is related, with varying degrees of closeness, to all the other members of that family, including ancient languages such as Greek, Sanskrit, Gothic, Old Irish, and Hittite, as well as modern languages including English, German, Welsh, Russian, Hindi, Persian, and Armenian. The languages to which it is most closely related are the ‘Romance’ (i.e. Roman) languages that descend directly from Latin; these include Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. English is a ‘Germanic’ language and not descended from Latin, but rather related to it as a niece to an aunt; the structure of English is very different from that of Latin. English vocabulary, however, has been heavily influenced by Latin (often via French), so that many Latin words have English derivatives.
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