"kh" is a very typical English transliteration of the IPA /x/, which is also represented by the Russian letter Х. Similarly, "ch" represents, sometimes, the IPA /tɕ/. In contrast, "h" does not at all represent the sound /x/ in English.

It’s “chleb” in Czech, at least in the dialect spoken by the ones who ended up in Central Texas - I remember the sign hanging over the bread aisle in the Czech Stop in West (get the sausage and sauerkraut kolache). “Laib” is Franconian (northern Bavaria) for loaf, and might be part of other regional dialects or German, in general.

> It's actually "hlyab" / "hleb", without the extra "k".

Not to worry, it's just transliterated like that because it's a velar fricative, sort of like—but not completely similar to—the Ch-sound in the German word ach. In any case I think you'll agree that it's pretty distinct from the breathy H-sound commonly found in Germanic languages.

> He used to say Norwegian is very similar to English. Is that true?

Yes and no. Bessides both being Germanic languages, English has a ton of Germanic loan-words from the viking age, and indeed older related words from the Saxons themselves. This makes part of the languages familiar to each other, and thus easier to learn. But really, the thing that makes English the most easy to learn for Scandinavians is the lack of dubbing on British and American films and TV shows over here. Being smaller nations, it's viewed as more economic to simply subtitle foreign shows. On the other hand, the guys who seems to have the easiest time learning Norwegian, outside other Scandinavians, are the Dutch. On the other hand English has way more Latin and French loanwords than in Scandinavian (though, granted, Swedish probably have more modern French loanwords due to their French lineage king).

You've got a similar situation, if you picture the different Slavic languages, such as Polish vs Bulgarian. I bet you think Bulgarian is easier to learn than Polish. Correct me if I'm wrong. :)

Lots of words are similar. Both are decendants of old norse, but English has accuired quite a bit of latin since the Norman conquest

English does not descend form Old Norse (a North Germanic language). It was merely influenced by it due to Viking invasions of the British isles. English is a West Germanic language more closely related to Frisian.

Old English is definitely West Germanic. It's much less clear whether Middle and current English can be considered more West Germanic or more North Germanic; there's still a debate raging on.

There’s not really a debate among linguists. No amount of Old Norse loan words can justify reclassifying English as North Germanic.

As far as grammar and syntax are concerned, Old Norse had some interesting effects such as influencing leveling of noun declensions but generally these are just simplifications of native English grammar and not imports from Norse (which had a full on conjugation system). The borrowing of certain Norse pronouns into English is probably one of the most extraordinary changes.

Another angle is to look at sound changes. English has shared sound changes with other West Germanic languages, while there are sound changes in North Germanic that English lacks. Compare the initial consonant cluster in West Germanic words for shield:

shield / schild (Dutch) / Schild (German)

Versus North Germanic:

skjold (Danish) / skjöldur (Icelandic) / skydda (Swedish)

There are some people who argue Middle English is a creole [1] due to the massive influences from Norman and Old Norse but to say it’s North Germanic (or even Romance?) is pretty incredible. The implication would be that the British Isles spoke a form of Old Norse which absorbed almost all the features of Old English, which is not what our written records show. My understanding is that even the creole theory is not widely accepted among linguists due to some features of creoles that are missing in English (e.g. standardization of irregular verbs, irregular plural nouns, …).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_creole_hypothes...

It is still a contested topic among linguists, I keep seeing newly published articles about it. The debate's mainly around whether the standard used for Middle English writing is Anglicised Norse versus Norsified Old English. I've seen strong arguments for both views. If you know English history or know English dialects then viewing some types of English as Anglicised Norse would not be surprising.