Certainly, it represents an advantage over an English speaker trying to learn a language like Mandarin, Arabic or Japanese, which utilise completely different writing systems. With the exception of learning rules regarding the additional umlauted letters (ä, ö and ü) and the Eszett or sharp S (ß), this transition is fairly simple. This is a major plus point, as it makes it easy for English speakers to start writing in the German language straight away.

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.

Furthermore, the modern languages have both loaned words from Latin, Greek and French.Ģ. It is estimated that more than a third of English non-technical lexicons are of Germanic origin, as are many English words. Given their shared origins, it should come as little surprise to learn there are strong resemblances between them.

Indeed, both the German and English languages are considered to be members of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, meaning they are still closely related today. 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. As a result, whether you are a native English speaker or someone who has picked it up as a second language, the process of learning German is made slightly easier. However, for English speakers interested in learning German, there are actually a lot of similarities. Learning a new language can seem like a daunting task, especially as people have a tendency to focus on the differences between the language(s) they currently speak and the one they are interested in acquiring.

German words in english language