Similarities between german and english?

Question

Hi, i know that german and english are two very similar languages my question is how similar is it like the words have similar sounds and pronunciations thing or is it a grammar, verb conjugation form,numeric system thing? thank you!

Answer 1

Most numeric systems are the same. Very few languages don't use Arabic numbering. Pronunciation and spelling is often similar (Friend vs. Fruend, Man vs. Mann, etc). I speak very poor German and my writing is even worse, so I can't tell you much grammatically, but syntactically they are very similar languages. English has some romantic influence but is wholly Germanic.

Answer 2

Well, grammar isn't that close, because English has a S-V-O word order, and German has a S-O-V word order. But many nouns and verbs have the same roots; in fact, you may recognize many German nouns as the same as an archaic English word, or an English synonym for the same German word. For example, the word "Hund", which means dog, obviously resembles our word "hound", which in English actually specifies a *type* of dog, whereas in German it is used to mean any dog. The German word "Auto", meaning "car", is seldom used in American English anymore. German words may also sound similar to English words but are spelled differently, like "Katze/Cat" "Haus/House", "Maus/Mouse" "Schul/School", Schiffe/Ship" "tanzen/dance", "zwei/(zwo)/two", etc.

Answer 3

Base words. Verb conjugation and the numeric system in German are much more complex. However, simple vocabulary ("that", "this", "water", "apple", etc.) that is found in both languages are the same in pronunciation. They evolved from the same root, but took on very different forms.

Hope that helps.

Answer 4

I agree with the others that most of the similarity between the two languages stems from the fact that much of the vocabulary has common roots. The words may evolve differently in the two languages, but in some cases, there is little enough difference in spelling and pronunciation, that you may (possibly)  still be able to recognize some words and phrases, even if you don't speak German. For example, "unter dem Wasser" should be easily recognizable as "under the water" and "Ich habe es getan" as "I have done it".

Some of the differences show up in grammar, which is simplified in English to all but eliminate what they call cases, change what is considered proper word order (that is if this was at one time more like it is in German), simplify verb conjugation, at least in the present tense, etc. However, there are some things about grammar as it pertains to verb forms going from one tense to the next that remain similar, despite the large number of differences. German and English share the concept of strong and weak verbs, and deal with them similarly. Which are considered strong and which are weak may be different between the two languages, but the idea is that past tense forms of weak verbs are created by adding something (-ed in English) to the verb, whereas strong verbs may be recognized by an internal change. The verb "drink" is strong in both languages, so it may be a good example, here:

Drink, drank, drunk

Trinken, trank, getrunken

Some differences show up in the choice of words that are more commonly used, a good example being the modern-day one of the debate in my area over which of the words "soda" and "pop" is the more preferred, i.e. considered correct. Of course, they are both right and are understood equally well; it's just that some prefer one over the other, and eventually society as a whole will, too. I can think of a German example, as well... At least, I get the impression that the word "Pferd" is more commonly used (please correct me if I am wrong) when talking about a horse, but the word "Ross" also exists. Now, it's not too much of a stretch to see the similarity between this word "Ross" and Old English "hros", which later became "horse."

As for the numeric system, as far as I am concerned, it is not that much more complicated than what we have in English. Do you remember the phrase "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie?" Well, that's the only real difference between the two systems--any time you come to the set of numbers from 21-99, German flips the numbers around like they did in that song/nursery rhyme. For example, 1945 would be read as nineteen-hundred five and forty. Even the set of numbers up to 20 follows exactly the same pattern as in English, whereas in a Romance language like Spanish or French or a Slavic language like Russian, it wouldn't. Compare:

English: ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen

German: zehn, elf, zwoelf, dreizehn, vierzehn, fuenfzehn, sechzehn, siebzehn.

The idea of something and ten in the form of the word is easily recognizable starting with the number thirteen...

Spanish: diez, once, doce, trece, catorce, quince, diez y seis, diez y siete.

French: dix, onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, seize, dix-sept

...here it's with the numbers sixteen and seventeen, respectively. French is actually a bit of an oddball, since it essentially starts over with the counting twice for every hundred numbers (once at 100, and once at eighty). For example, their number 97 literally sounds like four twenties ten seven, i.e. eighty and seventeen.

Russian is really simple, at least for that range of numbers, since their eleven literally sounds like one over ten.

desyat', odinnadtsat', dvenadtsat', trinadtsat', etc.

I may have gone a bit over the top with my answer, but if it helps to better answer the question, I suppose it was worth it. :)