English vs. German

Have you ever thought about learning how to speak German? Are you scared to try learning a new language? It can seem very intimidating especially if you have only learned English. I am going to explain some similarities and differences between the German and English language.

A similarity between German and English is of course they are both languages and used to communicate. Another thing they have in common is both languages have cognates. A cognate is a word or phrase that looks or sounds like a word or phrase in another language. For example “guten morgen” is a German phrase. What does it look or sound like in the English language? Easy, it is good morning in English. Another example is “willkommen.” This means welcome in English. Also there are false cognates. A false cognate is a word that looks or sounds like a word in another language but means something very different. For instance, what do you think the German word “gift” means? It means a gift or present right? Wrong, it means poison in English! The last similarity they have is that a word in either language could have multiple meanings but is spelled the same. One example is the English word “can.” Depending on what context, the word “can” could mean it is possible or a container to hold something. A German example is “bitte.” It could mean please or you are welcome. These are just a few examples of similarities between them.

Obviously there are a lot of similarities but there are also a lot of differences too. For one, English has more than one million words while the German language has less than 200,000 words! Another difference is that English is mostly spoken in the Western Hemisphere while German is mostly spoken in the Eastern Hemisphere. How the languages are translated is very different. You can translate German to English using Grimm’s Law, but there is nothing like that available to translate English to German. You just have to know the languages. Another way these languages vary is the English language can borrow words from the German language but the reverse is not true. This is because the English language is based off the Latin and German languages. My final difference is that an English phrase could have four words in it but the same phrase in German could have three words.

As you can see there are several similarities and differences. Hopefully you have a better understanding of the English and German Languages.




By Noah S.