5 German and English Similarities

The relationship between English and German is all but ancient history—the two languages are long-lost linguistic siblings.

Because the two languages were once the same, the grammar of English and German is quite similar, even if we don’t always recognize it so easily in English. Everything that we find difficult in modern German, from cases to gender to movable sentence structure, these all once existed in English.

While they may have fallen out of common usage, there are still remainders to be found in somewhat unexpected places today. Your brain has already been exposed to more of the German language’s key elements than you may have realized.

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1. Similarities in common vocabulary

Much of our modern English vocabulary comes from Latin.

The French-speaking Normans invaded England in 1066 led by William the Conqueror, bringing a slew of French and Latin words with them to England.

However, England was already full of Germanic tribes who were speaking a kind of Old English, using words like ich, finde, Hand and many others that are still used in German today.

This original English language that was infiltrated by French and Latin, called Anglo-Saxon, gets its name from the Germanic tribes who migrated there around 500-800 A.D. That’s right, Germanic. Can you see where this is going?

These Germanic tribes had been speaking their own version of English before the Normans came and continued to speak it after the Normans came to England. Norman and Latin words didn’t displace much vocabulary, or subtract anything, but rather they added to this early language.

Even today, 80 of the 100 most common words in English are Germanic in origin. 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. For example:

• I have – Ich habe
• It is long – Es ist lang
• Where is that – Wo ist das

When starting to learn German, concentrate on the basics and remember that they’re almost the same as their English counterparts. The words with the strongest similarities are often simple, functional words, like the, be, my and would which are used for almost 50% of all spoken English. When you encounter familiar words in English, use the similarities to help you remember them better!

2. Sentence structure and word order

The strange grammar and sentence structure put a lot of people off Shakespeare in school. It’s as if he couldn’t decide what he was actually saying, throwing words anywhere he wanted. Well actually, that’s the case!

At the time, the English language was going through a change from Middle English to Modern English. A lot of these old Germanic rules were being shed and much of our modern vocabulary was being created. (Shakespeare himself invented over 2,200 words writing all those plays and sonnets!)

Here’s a good example of Shakespeare’s English, from Hamlet:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

See how the first part ends in “a lender be,” with the verb “be” at the end? Looks similar to German word order, no? This short phrase also employs a semi-colon and two commas, reminiscent of the strict punctuation of modern German.

Back in Willie’s day, word order was a lot freer than it is now. The verb, noun or adjective could be moved around to stress its importance, exactly like German does today.

3. Pronunciation

Words from German and English are often incredibly similar in their pronunciations. There were periods where consonant sounds changed slightly between German and English. A good example is the German letter P, which changed to F 1500 years ago (Ship turned became Schiff, for example) but has remained the same ever since.

There are more examples of this type of change, usually involving everyday words like Father and Vater, Water and Wasser, Apple and Apfel—you get the idea. Both in meaning and pronunciation, these are practically the same. Compare this to French, where every final letter is silent and pronouncing the letter R sounds like somebody choking on a large piece of fromage.

Even the umlaut in German doesn’t introduce any sounds that we don’t have in English, but rather it clarifies them so that we don’t get too confused when trying to pronounce something!

German pronunciation, because it’s close to English and so logical in structure, isn’t difficult zu lernen (to learn). Listen to some podcasts or audiobooks and once that accent is in your head, you’ll never forget it. It also helps to consume other forms of native German content, such as the media clips found on the FluentU program.

Accent training can be tedious, but having the proper pronunciation will make it a lot easier for those around you to understand what you mean.

4. Inflection

Sometimes it seems like the biggest gulf between German and English is caused by those darn articles and word endings. We don’t have anything so arbitrary and complicated like that in English, do we? Well, actually…

Historically, all European languages had inflections in some shape or form, yet most have been gotten rid of as languages modernized.

There are plenty of exceptions to this, though. English still has the Genitive and Nominative cases. German is a unique animal in that it’s one of the few languages that has retained most of its inflections. This means that German words change depending on gender, number, order and tense.

As English has no gender and a strict sentence structure, we have pretty simple inflections. Girl becomes girls. Makes sense, right? You’ll just add an “s” or “es” to pluralize most of the time. Dog becomes dogs, got it. Man becomes…men. Oh wait, that doesn’t follow the rule. Let’s try again. Goose becomes…geese? What’s going on here?

These are Old English inflections, remnants of the old language, where the stem of the word is modified. Many of our most widely used words change like this, just as strong verbs change in German. Therefore, don’t let German inflections scare you. Our language is not so far removed from this. Think of strong German verbs as equivalent to English irregular verbs.

5. Shared outside influences

The Normans, as you know, brought a lot of new words into the English language. However, they weren’t the only ones.

When Germanic people arrived in the British Isles, their language and culture were influenced by the Celtic-speaking people who had previously settled there.

The Vikings, when they weren’t busy pillaging, scaring monks and the like, also settled in the British Isles, trading and living alongside Anglo-Saxons. The Vikings and Celts were spread all over Europe, including in what is now Germany, and their languages also influenced German.

These same Latin, Celtic and Norse words have been transferred and shared between English and German, creating a lot of nice cognates for us to easily understand.

Direct and Direkt come from the Latin Directus, likewise do Active and Aktif come from Activo.

Here’s a handy list with more Latin-derived words. Other common words like Physics and Physik, Anarchy and Anarchie have shared Greek roots. There’s more to the German and English language relationship than the original Proto-Germanic language. The influence of other languages through trade, migration and colonization have created two languages that are similar in some ways and so different in others.

 

Keine Angst (no fear), right?

Go ahead and make your German learning anxiety a thing of the past!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)