These three pronouns are also the only ones to get the 'sind' form of 'to be.' Copy. This maybe the strangest comparison our readers will think of - Irish and Spanish. facebook. 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. Here are some of the most obviously Greek-derived words that are sprinkled throughout German and English. Their grammars are at least as similar as the grammars of French, Spanish and Italian. instead of P people started to use F, instead of D they used T). The reason why Dutch is so similar to English and German at the same time can be found if we study histroy of language. 2. If Italian is the most similar romance language to vulgar Latin, French is one of the least similar. This is one of the reasons, aside from vocab, that German is a somewhat easier language to learn for English speakers, and vice versa. German has 4 cases while Dutch has none. Yet, what does it really mean for one language to be easier to learn? Since they are related to one another, German and English have a fair number of structural similarities. 10 German nicknames to call your sweetheart Maus (mouse) Mice aren't exactly the sweetest creatures around. The Sanskrit word it is derived from is Jungala which . By the way, the scientific term of the "Indo-Germanic language group" itself can be traced back more than 200 years. Norwegian vocabulary is rather similar to German vocabulary. Like Dutch, German is also a West Germanic language that is closely related to English. Generally for these two languages, French is considered to be easier to learn than German. The Norwegian alphabet is a based on the Latin script and has 29 letters. 1. Instead, it is considered Germanic. 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. While German and Dutch are quite similar in terms of vocabulary, they do differ significantly grammatically. However, that does not mean that they are all completely the . 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. The language samples were Lord's Prayers spoken in stereotypical accents for the language (for French, it was Parisian accent, for English RP etc). German and Dutch is said to be partially intelligeble with eachothers, and Dutch is mutally intelligible with . But while English is Germanic, it has acquired much of its vocabulary from other sources, notably Latin and French. 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. The languages spoken by the people of the Nordic region are also pretty similar. Although many people assume that Dutch and Danish are very similar since they are both Germanic languages, they are not mutually . Translating one Nordic language to the other requires a skilled and experienced translator that understands the nuances of both the source and target language. Another shared characteristic is the development and use of what would become the demonstrative pronoun "this" in English. Hundreds of languages compose the Indo-European family, so linguists divide them into closely related subfamilies. The Dutch language is very similar to various West Germanic languages, for instance, German and English. 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. However, English is not a romance language. 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. Both languages have very similar words for "book": Italian: libro. The lexical similarity between German and Dutch is roughly as similar as that between Spanish and Italian. English vs. German - How similar are these West Germanic languages? Not quite similar, but related. So English is a rather irregular Germanic language, having gained 50% or so . 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. This would later evolve into the use of unstressed syllables, which denotes the drastic change in terms of the grammatical system. I know, this also genuinely surprised me at the start. A major difference between Danish and German grammar is cases. Buch - book. "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 . Indeed, both the German and English languages are considered to be members of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language . In English, The word 'angst' expresses depression and anxiety. 1. spellings, and syntax are the most similar of all Germanic languages. PRONUNCIATION. 1: Spanish and other Romance languages. The small lexical distance between Germanic languages means that they share a large number of cognates or words with similar roots. 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. Finally, Swedish with its "singing" pronunciation-style with its many vowels is very different from the monotonous German. Modern English shares 75% or more of its vocabulary with French! All the Scandinavian languages are mutually understandable, their official languages such as; Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. The article shows a "simplified family tree" of Germanic languages with Anglo-Frisian as a direct ancestor of Old English and Old Frisian. Scholars often divide the Germanic languages into three groups: West Germanic, including English, German, and Netherlandic (Dutch); North Germanic, including Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Faroese; and East Germanic, now extinct, comprising only Gothic and the languages of the Vandals, Burgundians, and a few other . 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. Various professionals have commented on the similarities between some . 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. This can easily be done by comparing root words, which are very similar in both languages. For example, Germanic languages all use the same alphabet, share similar sentence and word structure, and use many of the same words to describe the same thing. Dutch is similar to English in the sense that it doesn't have cases, and thus writing the language is far easier than German. Apfel - apple. Although these two languages can sound similar, German has more consonant clusters than Norwegian and is harder to pronounce. 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. French is better at casting a wide net into both the Romance and Germanic languages by having similarities in both groups. Nordic languages may sound similar, but each is distinctly different from the other. They don't have similar words, other than a very few words borrowed from German into Hebrew. . Germanic languages are not as mutually intelligible with each other in the way that Romance and Slavic languages are. It's died out in German in favour of Arzt (and in Dutch), but still exists in the other Germanic languages. Being a West Germanic language, German is similar to Dutch, so learning German makes it relatively easier to learn Dutch later on. Study now. The Germanic family itself has subgroups; English is in the West Germanic branch along with . The Italic and Celtic languages are similar in many respects to Germanic, Venetic, and Illyrian. 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. It's mainly used for literary effect. 8. The answers aren't above anymore. English is obviously the most "different" Germanic language because it's been influenced so much by French and Latin. Esperanto is a constructed language with a-priori grammar (not similar in any way to any existing language, i.e. Five of them are North Germanic languages and descended from Old Norse. The Modern German language was not standardized in writing until the late 18th century. 3. German has a famous example of this. Language structure also tends to be similar. Scandinavian languages are all closer to English, Franconia languages; and to Low German than to High German. Hebrew is an Afro-Asiatic language and Germanic languages are European . German has a famous example of this. German is quite close to other Germanic languages such as Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. German has three genders, whereas Swedish has two, and while German has four cases, Swedish has none. The differences between Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and so forth have more to do with vocabulary than grammar. Achtung. Dutch school pupils learn foreign Germanic languages much more easily when teaching is based on understanding a language rather than speaking and writing it. Similar languages to Irish list no. created completely from scratch), and a-posteriori vocabulary . Hase (bunny) As you can imagine, "Hase" is also more commonly used for women than men. Have a look at these two sentences: Der Hund beit den Mann. So no, Germans will struggle to understand Afrikaans. As Watkins explains: "Although English is a member of the Germanic branch of Indo-European and retains much of the . Frisian is a group of three languages spoken in parts of the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. Continue Reading Quora User Furthermore, the use of . 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 . If you're looking for the closest relative to English that is definitely a distinct language, the answer is Frisian. In the case of English, it developed from Proto-Germanic, alongside German, Dutch, Yiddish, and a few other languages. In spite of the linguistic similarities of the Slavic languages in culture, religion, history, and political tradition, these countries and peoples have . For both Swedish and German, there are no shortage of native speakers to practice the language with. The Germanic branch is one of the ten or so Indo-European subfamilies. . Besser - better. . A major difference between Danish and German grammar is cases. Indo-Iranian, Greek, and Armenian display a considerable number of isoglosses. 6. 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. Table of contents 1. A fellow Germanic language, Swedish has some vocabulary common with English (mus for "mouse," kung for "king"), and a similar syntax, too. Copy. 10 similarities in German and English. Advertisement Like. What language is closest to old German? Can German Understand Dutch? Germanic Languages are spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people and by 2 billion as total (natives and second language speakers) around th. Five of them are North Germanic languages and descended from Old Norse. about 20 % comes from Germanic languages (German and English), and the rest comes mainly from Slavic languages (Russian and Polish) and Greek (mostly scientific terms In the meaning of 'attention,' this word is well-known all over the world, so many English speakers and natives started using it. When starting to learn German, concentrate on the basics and remember that they're almost the same as their English counterparts. In 2016, English vocabulary is 26% . Old English died out. 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 .