Differences Between German and EnglishĪlthough the two languages may have some aspects in common due to their coming from the same language branch, there are some features that hinder Germans from speaking English fluently. In terms of vocabulary, German has many similarities with Swedish, Norwegian and Danish vocabularies. The Indo-European language family’s West Germanic branch includes Yiddish, Low German/Low Saxon, Afrikaans, English, Dutch, the Frisian languages and Luxembourgish. German may be ranked 17 th as the most spoken language worldwide, but it is ranked second to English if you are talking about the most spoken West Germanic languages.

Due to their similarities, it is easy for English speakers to learn German as Germans find it easier to learn English. Conversely, English is used extensively in German pop culture and German media. It’s one of Luxembourg’s three official languages and is a co-official language in Poland’s Opole Voivodeship. It is also spoken by a sizeable population around Central Europe, especially in parts of Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Italy’s South Tyrol. German or Deutsch is the official language in the country that bears its name – Germany. About 76.1 million people in 28 countries use German as their first language.Ĭombining all speakers (native speakers and bilingual speakers), about 1,132,366,680 speak English, compared to 132,176,520 who speak German. On the other hand, German ranks 17th among the most spoken languages worldwide. A majority of them is located in Northern Ireland. About 379 million people found in 137 countries speak English as their first language. According to Ethnologue, the German language has 60% lexical similarity with English and 29% similarity with French.īased on the latest statistics, English is the third most spoken language in the world.

However, there are several similarities as well. While they are from the same branch, there are still differences between them.

The German and English languages are West Germanic, a branch of the Indo-European family of languages.

German words in english sound