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- While they are two different languages, German and English are actually quite similar! Both languages are West Germanic languages, meaning they come from an older ‘version’ of German. Each has its own history, but that shared past means they still have a lot in common.
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Jan 25, 2022 · While they are two different languages, German and English are actually quite similar! Both languages are West Germanic languages, meaning they come from an older ‘version’ of German. Each has its own history, but that shared past means they still have a lot in common.
Discover 7 major differences between German vs English grammar! This blog post shows key differences to help you learn these languages.
- How Different Is German from English?
- The Key Differences Between German and English
- German Noun Genders vs English Nouns
- German Articles vs English Articles
- German Doesn’T Have Silent Letters
- German Letters Have Limited Sounds
- Differences in Word Length
- German Verb For “To Have” Differs from English
- Similar Looking German Words vs English Ones
- German Capitalization and Punctuation vs English
Some people find German intimidating. But, it’s actually quite an approachable language. Sure, German is different than English. But it’s far from impossible to learn. And while learning a new languagecan be an intimidating experience for some people, with the right preparation, you’ll quickly reach fluency. So, how different are they? German vs En...
German is not as foreign as it might seem. German is an Indo-European language, which means that it shares a common (albeit distant) root with English. In terms of linguistic roots, English is closely related to German. In fact, English descended from Germanmany centuries ago. While there are some things that make German more complex to learn than ...
When it comes to nouns, English is one of the simplest European languages because all nouns have the same articles. This means that English nouns are gender-neutral, except for nouns that refer specifically to a living creature that has a gender, such as “hen” and “rooster.” German not only has gendered nouns, but it also has three genders: masculi...
Simply learning the gender of a noun is not enough. You also have to know the context of the noun to use the right version of the article. For example, if the noun is the subject of the sentence, you will use a different article than if the noun is the object of an accusative preposition. If the masculine noun is in the dative case, you use the thi...
While learning how to write English is excruciating. We even have spelling contests to show off that some kids can spell in our language. For example, “vacuum” has a silent “u,” “knee” starts with a silent “k,” and “ankle” ends with a silent “e.” German does not have this eccentricity. Every “e” at the end of a word makes a sound, including one of ...
You can probably remember how shocked you were in your childhood when you were learning to read and you found out that most letters have multiple sounds. Then there are five vowels, but not really because “sometimes y.” German does not do this. In addition to the same five vowels English has, German has three vowels with umlauts, and that is how th...
As an English speaker, you know about compound words, and you know that you use Latin roots in your everyday speech: “She’s in the doghouse,” “It was anticlimactic,” and “He’s just complaining about the establishment.” German does this too, but on a much larger scale. Some German words stack four and five words together to make one long compound wo...
In English, we talk about feelings using some form of a “being” verb, like “am.” In German, the verb for to have is sometimes used instead. For example, instead of saying “I am hungry,” a German-speaker would say “I have hunger”. This is similar for many other traits such as fear (I have fear). There’s a long list of words that use this constructio...
It is easy to take similar vocabulary words between English and German for granted. Many German words sound a lot like their English counterparts. These are called “cognates”. Be careful, though, because there are also many words that sound very similar but have different meanings. These are called “false cognates”.
One of the most noticeable differences in punctuation between English and German is that German capitalizes allnouns, without exception. This means you learn what a noun is much earlier in a German-speaking country because you have to write properly. However, they do not capitalize pronouns unless they are the beginning of a sentence. Where an Engl...
English and German are both Germanic languages, but they have distinct differences in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. English has a simpler grammatical structure compared to German, with fewer verb conjugations and noun declensions.
Nov 10, 2022 · One of the most obvious similarities between German and English is the fact that both languages utilise the same 26 letters which form the Latin alphabet. This is a major plus point, as it makes it easy for English speakers to start writing in the German language straight away.
Nov 22, 2019 · While there are certainly a lot of similarities between German and English, there are some parts of the languages that are very different. Knowing what those differences are will help you to learn German more quickly.
Oct 24, 2023 · These most basic, most frequently spoken words in English and German are from the same roots, making them all extremely similar. Give or take a few spelling and pronunciation differences, they’re practically the same.
