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Q: What language is most similar to English... German? French?
English is a part of the Germanic family, and is linked to many European languages but when it comes to language skills I rarely met native-english speaker mastering more than one language and usually they got a rather strong accent....
It's Spanish....familia = family, and countless other words sound similar to the English language. He he, I said: "words" (
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philbravery:
You may not believe it but the Dumb Fu#k is right for once 
Apparently 40% of English has Spanish roots to it
English is a Bastardized language with al sorts of influence from other country's
but as for the 2 options in the original question I would go with German
actually most words in english are loan words from french, linguists admit that more than the half comes from French. Then latin and greek. Family comes from the Latin word familia
Spanish is a latin language. Latin is old italian...
I'm very surprised to see nobody picked German. Very similar. Remember, the question didn't really ask us about linguistic origins but what is, today, the most similar. I'd agree French is close but I'd go with German.
The OP is onto something - not so many native English speakers master a second language (or without a strong accent I suppose) and this is surely because English has become one of the worlds international languages. Native English speakers don't have as much motivation or necessity.
I suppose that is a reason anyways.
Interesting question. I'm still going with German. Sometimes I almost want to say Portugese 'seems' similar to English.
I'd say German too. I am a native French speaker and can see the similarities between English and German.
Neither of them. Australian is closest to English. Then French, German, Spanish, Hebrew and then American.
Hugh.G.Rection:
I would put Canadian, before American, heck I would probably put Mandarin and Cantonese as being closer to English than American! 
I would posit most English speakers don't master a second language is because of geographical isolation. Further, since English is the lingua franca today, English speakers have less incentive to learn.
English began as a Germanic language, but that was about 1,000 years ago. It was then merged with Old French (which came from Latin), and later went through a bunch of vowel changes to become what it is today. So you'll see that there's German in it, and Latin in it, but overall it's kind of on its own.
Dutch
nevermind:
Ain't that the truth. I never heard Dutch in my life untilI had two dutch roomates and was able to figure out what they were saying to each other sometimes. Really weird.
The origins of the modern English language are complicated but essentially involve a mixture of old German, Norse, French, Latin, and plenty of local elements. What started off as an island of Celtic speakers changed to an island of Latin speakers with the Romans.
Latin was later merged with Germanic languages until 1066 when French started having a major impact on the language. It's isolation for a long period then lead to it becoming increasingly separate from the previously French language.
Today, I would probably say that the English language have the most words from German, especially as it is essentially considered a Germanic language. While there are plenty of French words and elements in the language most of these have been borrowed or imported into a Germanic structure.
Of modern languages Dutch or Frisian would probably be closer than German though.
Frissian. Sometimes, I can understan spoken Frissian more easily than a lot of dialects of English.
English is basically a Germanic language, as are the Scandanavian languages. French is a Romanic language, like Spanish and Italian (which get their language base from Latin).
Although the English language has a huge number of words compared to other languages, most of the commonly used words are Anglo Saxon (Germanic). Religion and law use a lot of words from Latin, where as science and medicine use many words from Greek. With the exception of cooking there are very few French words used, although many French and English words come from a common Latin base.
Pirate English. I use Pirate English on Facebook. It is the purest form of English. China is currently pirating Pirate English.
English is a mix on angle and anglo saxen dialects, most all languages in Europe are based off of Latin and Greek pre and suffix. You can see by the French and Spanish languages that a lot of vocabulary are similar in spelling and sound.Funny note, America was to be a German speaking country after the revolution, missed by one vote, this was due to America wanting to be completely different than England at the time and also because a large portion of the colonials where German. Later in the 1800's to completely vere away from England America decided to create its on dictionary with the same definitions but different spelling. I think the true question is, who butchers the English language the most?
English is a Germanic language and came about as a result of the migration of the Angles and Saxons. The structure of the language is Germanic, the day to day usage draws a lot from Latin languages like French. Of the three Latin-oriented language, Spanish, Italian and French, French is most aligned to English than the other two. Not only borrowed words like 'weekend' , ' pret a manger' etc, the root of many words are the same in both languages: ' couleur' for French, 'colour' for English. There are many others: parent, prepare etc.
English is a Germanic language with Romance language influence ever since 1066 and the Battle of Hastings. English today sounds nothing like old English, which sounded like a variation of German with a thick accent.
I think the linguistics experts say Dutch is the closest.
