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 the upper class. There is evidence, too, that foreign words (Latin, Greek, Italian, Arabic, Spanish) often entered English via Anglo-Norman. The language of later documents adopted some of the changes ongoing in continental French and lost many of its original dialectal characteristics, so "Anglo-French" remained (in at least some respects and at least at some social levels) part of the dialect continuum of modern French, often with distinctive spellings. Over time, the use of Anglo-French expanded into the fields of law, administration, commerce, and science, in all of which a rich documentary legacy survives, indicative of the vitality and importance