What is the closest language to German?

German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, and Scots.

What language is German most similar to?

It is most similar to Dutch and shares more than 80 percent lexical similarity to it, with Danish, Swedish and Norwegian following as close seconds. Well, we've covered the main differences and similarities between Romance languages and Germanic languages, so is German still the odd one out?

Is English closer to German or Dutch?

The Closest Major Language To English: Dutch

Like Frisian and English, Dutch is another West Germanic language that developed from Proto-Germanic. Because of this, Dutch possesses many words and phrases similar to English and has a similar grammatical structure.

Is German closer to English or Italian?

Vocabulary-wise, German has more in common with English than Italian. As you start studying various German texts, you'll notice that many words look like English, simply with different spellings. This is because German and English both belong to the Germanic branch of languages.

What are the top 3 languages spoken in German?

Frisian: The Closest Germanic Language to English

Which level of German is fluent?

The German language has 6 CEFR levels – starting with A1 (absolute beginner), and ending with C2 (completely fluent).

How do you say "hi" in German?

Hallo / Hi / Hey — Hello / Hi / Hey

This is one of the easiest ways to greet someone in German, because it's also used as an English greeting! You can say hi, hey, or the German version of hello—hallo to strike up a conversation with anyone.

What accent is close to German?

Upper Saxon Dialect (Sächsisch)

It is fairly similar linguistically to standard German and other dialects, but it has an accent that many German speakers have strong feelings about (like how many Brits dislike American accents).

What is the hardest language to learn?

UNESCO is giving credit where credit is due: Chinese is officially the most difficult language in the world. To give you an idea of the complexity of this language: The written form gives no clues as to pronunciation… And pronunciation and intonation completely change the meaning of a word.

How close are Spanish and German?

But on the scale of world languages, Spanish and German do share a lot in common. They're both distant cousins in the Indo-European family. They both use the Latin alphabet. They both have grammatical gender, so you won't be escaping that part anytime soon.

What language is farthest from English?

These scores suggest a ranking of linguistic distance from English among these languages: Japanese being the most distant, followed by Mandarin, then French and then Afrikaans, Norwegian and Swedish as the least distant.

Who speaks low German?

Dialects of Low German are spoken in the northeastern area of the Netherlands (Dutch Low Saxon) by approximately 1.6 million speakers. These dialects are written with an unstandardized orthography based on Standard Dutch orthography. The position of the language is, according to UNESCO, vulnerable.

What's the easiest language to learn?

Are Polish and German similar?

German and Polish are two very different languages. They're remotely related because they're both Indo-European, but since German is Germanic and Polish, Slavic, they have significant differences in terms of pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.

Are German and Afrikaans similar?

While some alphabet similarities exist, the straightforward grammatical structure of Afrikaans, lacking certain complexities present in German, along with its diverse vocabulary origins, renders it a distinctive member of the Germanic language family​¹⁰​.

Do Germans say "Guten Abend"?

In German, just like in English, you use different greetings depending on the time of day. Knowing whether it's appropriate to say Guten Morgen (good morning) or Guten Abend (good evening) will make your interactions smoother.

Is German easy to learn?

German is a Category II language (out of five categories), the only one in this category. They say that you need 30 weeks or 750 hours of study to master German. So, compared to other languages, German is not at all difficult. And you can learn it fast and easily with the right methods.

What is the German response to "danke"?

It is only used as a greeting in German. An appropriate response to Danke would be "Bitte", "Gern geschehen" or "Kein Problem".

How many hours does it take to speak German fluently?

German is considered a Category II language in terms of its proximity to English. Based on that, fluency is potentially achieved by investing at least 750 hours of study.

Is German a faster language than English?

One 2011 study from the Université de Lyon looked at 7 languages, which reported the order as Japanese (7.84 syllables per second), Spanish (7.82), French (7.18), Italian (6.99), English (6.19), German (5.97) and Mandarin (5.18).

Is Dutch a Germanic language?

Dutch is part of the West Germanic group, which also includes English, Scots, Frisian, Low German (Old Saxon) and High German.

What's the easiest instrument to learn?

What is the most useful language to learn after English?