English language and sometimes also vocabulary, grammar and spelling—English-speakers from around the world are able to communicate with one another with relative ease. English is an Indo-European language and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages. Old English originated from a Germanic tribal and linguistic continuum along the Frisian North Sea coast, whose languages gradually evolved into the Anglic languages on the British Isles, and into the Frisian languages and Low German/Low Saxon on the continent. The Frisian languages, together with which the Anglic languages form the Anglo-Frisian languages, are the closest living relatives of English. Low German/Low Saxon
Anglo-Norman language (corporation), (court)). Place-names in Norman are few, but there is Buttevant (from the motto of the Barry family: , "Push to the Fore"), the village of Brittas (from the Norman , "boarding, planking") and the element "Pallas" (Irish , from Norman , "boundary fence": compare palisade, The Pale). Others exist with English or Irish roots, such as Castletownroche, which combines the English "Castletown" and the Norman , meaning rock. Only a handful of Hiberno-Norman-French texts survive, most notably the "The Song of Dermot and the Earl" (early 13th century) and the Statutes of Kilkenny (1366). Anglo-Norman language Anglo-Norman, also known