![]() This is very important with German because they do have a lot of words that are extremely similar to English words. When reading, pay attention to this so that you can easily translate your needs when speaking in German.Ĭognates are words that are similar but have different meanings. For example, you say "I am hungry." This associates you with the "hungry." However, in German you would say "I have hunger." They don't associate their identities with a temporary state, but simply state that they have a particular feeling or sensation. Using "To Have" Instead of "To Be"Īs an English speaker, you are accustomed to using to be to express a lot about yourself. It's refreshing and lets you focus on the other more difficult aspects of learning German instead of getting caught up in trying to spell the words. That E at the end of a word isn't silent either. When a word like knee starts with a K, you say the K - it isn't silent. Learning to spell in English may not be as much of a nightmare as some other languages, but those silent letters can make it far more difficult. This is why it is essential to learn the appropriate article for each noun. You will be spending more time learning everything there is to know about articles than pretty much any other part of German. Not only do nouns have gendered articles, plurals have their own article that also changes based on case. The real challenge comes when you realize that each of those articles changes based on the case. Learning the gender of a noun is only the beginning. ![]() This will help you to better learn the articles as well. Obviously, spoken German is unaffected by this difference, the thing is that in the beginning, you are going to spend far more time reading and writing than speaking.Īs you study the writing, you can focus on the capitalized words, and notice the articles that proceed them. This makes it very easy to identify the nouns in any sentence, but it also makes it a little more challenging to write. English capitalizes proper nouns: German capitalizes all nouns. This difference may be a little strange at first, but it will help you learn the nouns. ![]() It also makes you appreciate just how easy you have it as an English speaker. You want to make sure that you don't feel so self-conscious when you speak. Using apps will help you a lot because knowing which of the three articles to use for each noun will take a lot of time to get accustomed to considering. Most European languages have two genders for their articles, but German has three. The fact that the German language has multiple versions of each article is incredibly unusual for an English speaker. Being aware of the biggest differences can help you focus on the aspects that are trickiest, and feel comfortable with the things that are similar.Įasily the most obvious difference between English and German is how complicated it is to learn articles. From word order to vocabulary, there is actually a lot that will be very familiar as you learn German. Knowing the language differences between German and your native English actually makes it easier to be comfortable speaking German. If you want to pick up two languages at once, it is actually a great bridge to better understand German. Frisian, spoken by the Dutch, is the most similar language to English today. The influences from other languages were what made it diverge so drastically from its roots. If you spend some time with someone who knows Old English, you will quickly see just how similar English and German used to be. Once the Romans left the island of England, it was often attacked by Vikings, then the Vikings settled there. English does have influences from many of the languages in Europe, but its roots are squarely in the Germanic languages. This will help you build confidence to speak more often.īefore jumping into the differences, you may wonder why German is considered an easier language to learn. You can also spend some time reviewing pronounciation to get more comfortable while speaking. However, you need to remember these differences so that you can become accustomed to them when you are writing and speaking. Grammar is not the most interesting aspect of learning German, but being aware of the differences goes a long way to committing more vocabulary words to memory faster.Īpps are definitely a great way to practice these differences. Knowing what those differences are will help you to learn German more quickly. While there are certainly a lot of similarities between German and English, there are some parts of the languages that are very different. When it comes to German and English, there are far more similarities than there are differences because German was the root language for English. One of the best ways to learn about a language is to compare it to your own.
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