I doubt that a serious linguist would really classify languages in a hierachical categorization system, and would not argue for a joined language continuum. I i

I doubt that a serious linguist would really classify languages in a hierachical categorization system, and would not argue for a joined language continuum. I interact on a daily basis in english, german and swedish and it is totally obvious to me that there is a long list of things were two more or less randomly share one characteristic (or words) compared to the other, e.g declination in english and swedish, or compound words in german and swedish. Similarly, dialects (and other types of variations) are clearly intermediates based on geography. And time obviously also plays a role in divergence, hence would old norse be closer to todays english than swedish or norwegian (minus the modern words). But if I had to make a decision, english would be the outgroup.