Other German words in English that we use every day. One of the most prominent ways German and English are similar to each other is the fact that both languages utilize the same 26 letters which form the Latin alphabet. 3. . The answers aren't above anymore. 1. Second, the firm . French is better at casting a wide net into both the Romance and Germanic languages by having similarities in both groups. The Dutch language is very similar to various West Germanic languages, for instance, German and English. If this is true, it contrasts with the opinions of other language researchers who have long suggested English descends from Anglo-Saxon. German and Dutch is said to be partially intelligeble with eachothers, and Dutch is mutally intelligible with . . 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. EXPLANATION Similarity VOCABULARY: Percentage of vocabulary that isvery similar in both languages. The languages spoken by the people of the Nordic region are also pretty similar. However, that does not mean that they are all completely the . Although many people assume that Dutch and Danish are very similar since they are both Germanic languages, they are not mutually . The German word 'Hund' and the Dutch word . The lexical similarity between German and Dutch is roughly as similar as that between Spanish and Italian. This is a major plus point, as it makes it easy for English speakers to start writing in the German language straight away. Likewise, only 'I,' 's/he,' and 'it' get different 'to be' conjugations; everything else gets 'are.' Conversely, in German, only 'Sie,' 'sie (pl),' and 'wir' get the - en verb endings and everything else gets a special ending. German has a famous example of this. Like. Hase (bunny) As you can imagine, "Hase" is also more commonly used for women than men. Also, English has 60% words of German roots, and only around 30,000 French words have enlisted in the English language. Have a look at these two sentences: Der Hund beißt den Mann. This can easily be done by comparing root words, which are very similar in both languages. Indo-Iranian, Greek, and Armenian display a considerable number of isoglosses. The Germanic family itself has subgroups; English is in the West Germanic branch along with . Study now. Hundreds of languages compose the Indo-European family, so linguists divide them into closely related subfamilies. German has four grammatical cases, whereas Danish has none. Scandinavian languages are all closer to English, Franconia languages; and to Low German than to High German. Yiddish comes from Medieval High German, as official German is High German, this is arguably the closest language to give you your answer, assuming something like Hessian or Luxembourgish hasn't been given language status. Latin: liber. English vs. German - How similar are these West Germanic languages? Compared to 61, the rate is 4%. The language samples were Lord's Prayers spoken in stereotypical accents for the language (for French, it was Parisian accent, for English RP etc). 9. Can German Understand Dutch? Yet, what does it really mean for one language to be easier to learn? Achtung. Afrikaans is closer to English and Dutch than it is to German. However, in German, the definite article can be der . Hebrew is an Afro-Asiatic language and Germanic languages are European . In this video, we'll compare 40 words with native speakers of German and English.English. Old English died out. In English, The word 'angst' expresses depression and anxiety. Words like man, woman, house, child . Five of them are North Germanic languages and descended from Old Norse. The differences between Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and so forth have more to do with vocabulary than grammar. @phipsgabler That's a Germanic word (possibly of ultimately Celtic origin, but definitely Germanic in the first instance), borrowed into Finnish from Swedish läkare and into Common Slavic from some Germanic form as well (not sure precisely which) in pre-written times. . She successfully grouped English, High German and Low German together and Romance languages too. So while Germanic languages don't share much mutual intelligibility, they still share some vocabulary and grammar rules that make them similar. In fact, the hardest things to change in a language are its grammar; words are stolen every day, but grammar changes like groweth to grows happen once a century or so, and so gradually nobody notices. Dutch is the German language. This is the main difference between Dutch and Danish. Like Dutch, German is also a West Germanic language that is closely related to English. Very Similar German and English Words (Different Spelling) These German and English words are so similar that you probably do not need the translation; however, as they are spelt slightly, we have added them in the case of doubt. You might have heard once that English is a "mix of German and French". In the case of English, it developed from Proto-Germanic, alongside German, Dutch, Yiddish, and a few other languages. In 2016, English vocabulary is 26% . While German's features, specifically its grammar, make it harder. Cases are a pattern of declensions that nouns take on depending on their role in a sentence. Yiddish is a Germanic language with a strong Slavic influence and loanwords from Hebrew. German has four grammatical cases, whereas Danish has none. 2. We have an exciting new career opportunity for a German speaking Customer Support Consultant in Cape Town, South Africa to join an international super-fast growing tech company that are revolutionising hoteliers around the globe.Your ideas and performance will be making a big difference in their organisation and the global hotel industry. English is obviously the most "different" Germanic language because it's been influenced so much by French and Latin. 10 similarities in German and English. They are quite similar in terms of grammar. The Norwegian alphabet is a based on the Latin script and has 29 letters. 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. This is one of the reasons, aside from vocab, that German is a somewhat easier language to learn for English speakers, and vice versa. For both Swedish and German, there are no shortage of native speakers to practice the language with. Copy. So no, Germans will struggle to understand Afrikaans. German to English Cognates: 37 Everyday Germanic Words in English. I know, this also genuinely surprised me at the start. Der Dschungel. Indeed, both the German and English languages are considered to be members of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language . The Germanic branch is one of the ten or so Indo-European subfamilies. While that is not really accurate at all, English and German indeed belong to the same family of West Germanic languages. German. Closest (Definitely Distinct) Language: Frisian. There are many similarities between German and other languages within the West Germanic language branch, including Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German, Luxembourgish, Scots, and Yiddish. Another shared characteristic is the development and use of what would become the demonstrative pronoun "this" in English. Although there are significant differences between each of the Germanic languages, they are all origins of the Proto-Germanic language tree and therefore share many similarities. It's also similar in that it shares many of the same words as English, words such as 'open' 'sorry' and 'week'. First, a sense of deep respect and emotional warmth towards the millennia-old history of the Indo-Germanic language family, its similarity and intellectual closeness, all linked to mother language Sanskrit. Since vocabulary is the hardest part of learning a language, I'd say that the Romance languages are easier to learn than the Germanic languages. English is a Germanic language. Continue Reading Quora User German is only similar to Danish in some degree (once you know it), but apart from some individual basic words ( being a Germanic . Dilemma Gorilla Marathon Palimpsest Palindrome Paranoia Phantom Saxophon (e) Theologie (y) Therapie (y) Topos .as well as many other lexical borrowings which are spelled less similarly by the two languages. Modern English shares 75% or more of its vocabulary with French! This stress is used to emphasize the syllable, which bears the importance of the semantic element. Buch - book. The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa.The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers.All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in . Clearly the OP prefers their own interpretation of history and language evolution. Their grammars are at least as similar as the grammars of French, Spanish and Italian. Best Answer. 6. By the way, the scientific term of the "Indo-Germanic language group" itself can be traced back more than 200 years. Similar languages to Irish list no. In Europe, it is the first . 1. Everyday German phrases and German to English cognates (basically word cousins) are super prevalent in our daily language and will really help you jump headfirst into the language. In addition, the Balto-Slavic languages share many features in common with the Indo-Iranian languages. German (along with Dutch and most other Germanic tongues) is, like English, profoundly shaped in its vocabulary by Latin and the Romance languages, a fact that often goes unappreciated, and 2 . Eisberg. The languages spoken by the people of the Nordic region are also pretty similar. If you're looking for the closest relative to English that is definitely a distinct language, the answer is Frisian. This essentially means that English belongs to the Northern Germanic language group, similar to Danish, Swedish, Faroese, and Norwegian. This is an added advantage for English speakers as they can start writing in German effortlessly and without working too hard. However, English is not a romance language. Apfel - apple. The proximity meant that the vernaculars had each other to get influenced by and as a result, did not develop too many differences. Germanic speakers often understand the dialects closest to their own native speech. These same words in the German language are all very different. Being a West Germanic language, German is similar to Dutch, so learning German makes it relatively easier to learn Dutch later on. . One common similarity of all Germanic languages is the strong stress that falls on the first root syllable. It is considered a "peripheral" romance language. In a similar vein, there are many similar innovations in Germanic and Balto-Slavic that are far more likely areal features than traceable to a common proto-language, such as the uniform development of a high vowel (*u in the case of Germanic, *i/u in the case of Baltic and Slavic) before the PIE syllabic resonants *ṛ, *ḷ, *ṃ, *ṇ, unique . Check out these everyday Germanic words in English. The proximity meant that the vernaculars had each other to get influenced by and as a result, did not develop too many differences. The difference between these two languages is that English belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Germanic Languages, whereas French is a Romance language, so it is related to Spanish and Italian. The rise in importance of the city of Rome was paralleled by a spread of the Latin language. In the meaning of 'attention,' this word is well-known all over the world, so many English speakers and natives started using it. Despite the name, this is not Frisian at all but a variety of Dutch strongly influenced by Frisian. If Italian is the most similar romance language to vulgar Latin, French is one of the least similar. In spite of the linguistic similarities of the Slavic languages in culture, religion, history, and political tradition, these countries and peoples have . But while English is Germanic, it has acquired much of its vocabulary from other sources, notably Latin and French. What language is closest to old German? So English is a rather irregular Germanic language, having gained 50% or so . Another characteristic of German is that the first letter in a noun is always capitalized; that's why Handy, Schiff, and Buch are all written with a capital letter. PRONUNCIATION. From Old English we can follow the development of the language directly, in texts, down to the present day.". Around the 5th century the Second Germanic Sound Shift took place when some consonants changed (e.g. Germanic languages are not as mutually intelligible with each other in the way that Romance and Slavic languages are. Both languages have very similar words for "book": Italian: libro. Hittite-Luwian displays significant parallels with Tocharian. Although these two languages can sound similar, German has more consonant clusters than Norwegian and is harder to pronounce. instead of P people started to use F, instead of D they used T). The main languages of this group are French, Italian, Provencal, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian. Look at the sample sentences and see how many words you can recognize: 1. For an English speaker, Swedish is without doubt the easier language to learn. A major difference between Danish and German grammar is cases. Bärchen (little bear) Mausebär (mouse bear) Schnecke (snail) Schnucki (no English translation) Perle (pearl) Liebling (darling) Have a look at these two sentences: Der Hund beißt den Mann. Pronunciation may be a struggle at first, with nine vowels (like ö or å) and the sje- sound, which is unique to Swedish. Furthermore, the use of . "Modern English is a direct descendant of the language of Scandinavians who settled in the British Isles in the course of many centuries, before the French-speaking Normans . All the three languages belong to the same language family. Furthermore, the use of . 8. The main reason English seems closer to Romance languages than it does other Germanic languages is because its vocabulary has been highly influenced by Romance languages over the years. The Latin Linguistic Family: The Latin linguistic group is also known as Romance languages. The Italic and Celtic languages are similar in many respects to Germanic, Venetic, and Illyrian. These two languages were very similar and used by religious leaders to translate the Christian bible. The word Dschungel comes from the word 'jungle', used in Hindi and other South-Asian languages to describe dense forests. Here are some prominent examples: Reading Is One Thing, Listening Is Another On paper, the West Germanic languages can look extremely similar (especially if you're comparing Dutch and Afrikaans, but we'll get to that in a minute). These three pronouns are also the only ones to get the 'sind' form of 'to be.' 10 German nicknames to call your sweetheart Maus (mouse) Mice aren't exactly the sweetest creatures around. Nordic languages may sound similar, but each is distinctly different from the other. Amongst important languages, Dutch is the closest. The small lexical distance between Germanic languages means that they share a large number of cognates or words with similar roots. As Watkins explains: "Although English is a member of the Germanic branch of Indo-European and retains much of the . facebook. During the 1500's, the evolving Modern German language was still divided across the region, although two types emerged: Protestant German and Catholic German. The reason why Dutch is so similar to English and German at the same time can be found if we study histroy of language. German has three genders, whereas Swedish has two, and while German has four cases, Swedish has none. What Languages Are Similar To German? Cases are a pattern of declensions that nouns take on depending on their role in a sentence. I did not expect those two languages in the same breath when comparing similar languages. German has 4 cases while Dutch has none. It's a West Germanic language that shares 80% lexical similarity with English. A fellow Germanic language, Swedish has some vocabulary common with English (mus for "mouse," kung for "king"), and a similar syntax, too. All of the Slavic languages are closely related to each other, but they are also related to the Romance and Germanic languages, including English, and to others in the Indo-European family. Perhaps the most crucial point to make is that English is a language which originally derived from West Germanic more than 2,000 years ago. While German and Dutch are quite similar in terms of vocabulary, they do differ significantly grammatically. This maybe the strangest comparison our readers will think of - Irish and Spanish. Five of them are North Germanic languages and descended from Old Norse.
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