sister language
Related tongue, shared ancestor
Sister languages share a common ancestor—they descend from the same parent language.
Spanish and Portuguese are sister languages, both evolving from Latin.
English and German are sisters through Proto-Germanic.
The term emphasizes parallel descent rather than one language giving rise to another: Linguists study how sister languages diverge over time.
- cognateWord sharing etymological origin
- rootUnderground absorbing structure
- reconstructionRebuilding after destruction
- family resemblanceVisible hereditary similarity
- siblingBrother or sister
etymology · Indo-European · Sino-Tibetan · common ancestor · Old English · syntactic alignment · Afro-Asiatic · echo · semantic equivalence · Grimm's Law · Dravidian · loanword · branch · cousin · accent · Germanic · kin · substratum
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