This simplification of the forms of words is not absolutely confined to the English language. It appears to be a tendency of language; a modern tendency, using modern in its widest sense. For this movement toward simplification appears in the Latin, in the Romance tongues formed from it, and in the Gothic languages. In none, however, does this simplification, this destruction of superfluous forms, approach, even remotely, that which has taken place in English. So different, indeed, are the results, that the process seems, if not of another kind, at least as having another motive. For example, all the other languages retain the absurdity of gender. In this respect German is no better than French. And let me here remark that the common notion that English and German are most alike of all modern languages, and most nearly akin, is altogether wrong. On the contrary, English and German are very unlike; the most unlike of all the Gothic (or Teutonic) languages. English and French have much greater likeness, both in substance and in structure. There are more words now common to the English language and to the French than to English and German; and the syntax of the French language is very much more like that of the English, than German syntax is. A French sentence literally translated in the French order of the words is, in most cases, so like an English sentence that it requires little change to be correct English, while a similar translation of a German sentence produces an effect both harsh and ludicrous.