Similarities between German & English Part 1

Is English a Germanic language?

The fact that English is a language that descended from West Germanic more than 2,000 years ago is arguably the most important point to convey. In fact, the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family is regarded to include both the German and English languages, making them still relatives today.

It should not be surprising to realize that they are very similar given their common ancestry. According to estimates, many English terms and more than a third of the language’s non-technical lexicons have Germanic roots. Additionally, vocabulary from Latin, Greek, and French has been borrowed into both of the current languages.

English & German use the same alphabet

The fact that both German and English use the same 26 letters that make up the Latin alphabet is one of the most visible parallels between the two languages. This is a significant bonus because it makes it simple for English speakers to begin writing in German right immediately.

This shift is rather straightforward, save for understanding the rules for the additional umlauted letters (ä, ö, and ü) and the Eszett or sharp S (ß). It certainly has an edge over someone trying to learn a language like Mandarin, Arabic, or Japanese that has a writing system that is fundamentally different from English.