American reacts to English vs. German Language | How Similar Are English and German Words? 

The reason why the words are capitalized is that in german not just proper names are capitalized but all nouns too

05:40 German has this very unique thing where all nouns are capitalized. In fact, in some cases changing the capitalization of a word can change its meaning entirely. For example: Laut = (the) Sound laut = loud Morgen = (the) morning morgen = tomorrow

"What lies between sex and fear?" - as a German, I'd say fünf.

You always sound very well when you are NOT trying to vomit out the german words 😉 More tenderness and less sound of a German officer in WW2! 😆

English is of Germanic origin but Latin is a huge influence on this language since the Romans conquered Britannia and later the French.

Banane and Ananas were poor choices because they're both loans from other languages. Pferd is an interesting one. Not because they're related, but because the related word is "Ross" which was "ors" in OHG and the and changes their position, which is very common in indo-european languages. (i.e. "garden" and "grad") Edit: Oh... And etymologically it should be: Affe - ape Hund - hound and there are many more interesting words like: Schwein - swine Tier - deer (don't ask...:) Maus - mouse Ratte - rat Gans - goose Henne - hen

Imagine if they had continued counting past 20. Ryan would be so confused xD

Btw they chose "monkey", but we have no different words for ape or monkey, both is called "Affe". Ape - Affe sounds more similar :3

An old German word for the number two is "zwo". It's still used today if you want to clarify the number two because especially over the telephone or in a loud environment "drei" (3) and "zwei" (2) can sound a little bit similar. Many German Z-words are T-words in English: Zehn - ten Zunge - tounge Zoll - toll Zinn - tin Zwanzig - twenty zahm - tame Zeh - toe zimmern - to timber Zwielicht - twilight Zweig - twig zwicken - to tweak Zwirn - twine

In the german language all nouns are written in capital.

Sometimes when the words are different, there is a related word , but with different meaning or less common. Examples: German "Hund" is related to English "hound", which in English means a specific kind of dog, not just any dog; German "Affe" is related to English "ape" which means a specific kind of monkey ; English "horse" is related to German "Ross", which also means horse but is a bit old fashioned. The German word "Pferd" for horse is an odd one. It's a loan word from Latin "para veredus" which apparently means "postal horse".

Ryan, I must say, you are getting better at pronouncing german words! Some of them almost sounded german.

In German, we capitalize EVERY noun - regardless whether it is a proper noun or a common noun. For foreigners, it should make it easy to be able to identify nouns in any text, even if they don't understand them.

In a lot of cases, the letter "Z" in German is transformed into a letter "T" in other languages, while staying somewhat similar otherwise. Two/Zwei, Tooth/Zahn, Toe/Zeh, Cat/Katze, Kitty/Kätzchen(/Katjes), while at that, a -chen at the end is often added fore cuteness.

I must say, your pronouncing of the word "Katze" (cat) was almost perfect. Only a german could spot the difference.

It's really interesting, how english speaker count from 10-20 the same way germans do eg 15 => 5 & 10 => fifteen but above 20, they switch the last digits eg 25 => twenty & five ... meanwhile in german it's still 5 & 20

Great job, Ryan! Give it another year or two and you can take your family on a trip to Germany and be the translator for them

Your pronunciation has gotten better! Especially the ch- sounds!

your pronounciation is on point for the most part!

If you're interested in the connection between german and english - try watching a video with old english compared with german. Actually pretty interesting

02:55 Technically English is the odd one out here, as English (and Spanish) are the only major languages in the world where it's valed "pineapple" instead of something similar like "Ananas".

Sometimes English words are even more German than the German words.🙂 Window for example. It comes from Wind and eye. The eye of the house where the wind comes in so to say. Wind und Auge are German words and used in German language. In Germany we use the word Fenster for window. Fenster comes from a not Germanic language. It comes from the Latin "fenestra". I hope you see that in this case the English language is more Germanic than German. I could tell you about the word pineapple also. It is in fact Germanic but it does not matter. We're not in class here 😉

Fruits and animals that were unknown in Europe at the time English and German split, were coined separately. Sometimes they were imported from the same language, in those cases it is the same word anyway. "Banana" is an example which both English and German imported from an African language. The same is true for "chocolate" which is originally from a native American language. Sometimes both languages went different ways though. German "Ananas" is also from a native American language, whereas the first English speakers who saw one apparently thought it looked like a pinecone and named it for that.

Your pronunciation of "Katze" was perfect.

The English language is basically a mix. You have the Germanic from the Anglo-Saxons, Latin from the Romans, Norman French and Celtic from the Britons. So often you have for example a Latin or Celtic origin word and a Germanic origin word in English. Like e.g. dog comes from Celtic and hound from Germanic, similar to Hund, the German word for dog.

As a German, I can say that he pronounced many of the words correctly

They are capitalised because they are nouns. If you try to learn them it's really important to learn their gramatical gender (der, die, das) because later on when you try to express for eg. that something belongs to someone you won't be able to do so without knowing the gramatical gender of the nouns.

Pineapple and Ananas are not the same because when europeans discovered this thing existed, the anglo-saxons had lived in England for so long that there was no linguistic connection between the two languages anymore and they just named it seperately.

dont worry about his "r", he has a very regional southern accent. Most German speakers dont say it like that. We use the same "r" as in French, if you know how that sounds. Lion was written capital als in German ALL nouns are to be written capital, this is actually important on plenty of words as sometimes letter combos are re-used but mean something else. But you can see what is a noun, what would be a verb etc.

Has been a pleasure watching, as always 😁

The "R" sound in German is quite similar to the French one. If it's easier for you to pronounce a thrilled "R" using the tip of your tongue, it would be OK as well. The dialects in Franconia (around Nürnberg) use that too.

You'r actually doing very good mate. Keep going!

English and German have the same origin. Dutch is an intermediate stage

Due to the german grammer language rules, you have to capitalize every (nouns = Normen in german language) In englisch language you have article like a/an/the and you use (the) for every word. In german we have to always use this three article. For masculine words, we use (der). For feminine words, we use (die). For neutral words, we use (das). The article in german are (der, die, das) e.g. (der Apfel = the apple) (der Löwe, der Tiger = the lion, the tiger) (der Hund = the dog) (die Katze = the cat) (das Brot = the bread) (der Mann = the man) (die Frau = the woman) (das Baby/Kind = the baby/child) (das Handy = the cell phone) Your name is Ryan and by speaking german we say (der Ryan) because your name is masculine etc.

Ryan, your umlaut pronounciation is great. And your pronounciation in general has become very good. Good work.

German and English both are Germanic languages, however, linguists debate whether English really can still be considered a Germanic language since it's been heavily influence by French, a Romance language, when the British court spoke French after the invasion of the Normans

I love watching you learn German or take quizzes, I don't know why. It's sympathetic.

4:58 Your "Katze" was perfect.

It becomes interesting when Dutch is included in the comparison. Dutch is the link between humans and Brits/Americans. :D

I don't know why, but these videos just make me happy as a german. It just makes the days worth it sometimes.

About the Ü sound: Try to pronounce a very closed oo sound, with your lips pursed. Then push your tongue slowly forwards and listen to how the sound changes. You will notice it will shift towards the Ü. In the end position, my tongue tip touches the inside of my lower teeth and sides of my tongue touch or maybe very slightly squeeze into the gap between my upper and lower teeth at the sides. The Ü is spoken pretty far in the front and with pursed lips. Of course this might change a little depending on which sounds come before or after it in actual words. But in "fünf", you have the f and n which are also spoken at the front of the mouth, so the ü fits right in. Just experiment a little with your tongue and lips positions until it sounds right. (Maybe look up a recording by a native German speaker.)

3:40 The German R has quite a few possible pronunciations, depending on the dialect or regiolect. The uvular trill (that one in the video) is extremely rare though and I've never heard anyone use it for anything other than emphasis or comedic effect. 3:50 Yes you do, a uvula :D

Dude your "Katze" before even hearing him say it in german was 100% spot on! Wow - if I only would have heard this word from you, I would say you are 100% german :D

I was surprised how perfect you pronounced Katze. No one would know with just this word that it isn‘t your first language.

5:50 In German, all nouns are capitalized. This has a very long tradition, dating back to the time the printing press was invented. In Western Europe, the usage of Antiqua fonts (like Garamond or Bodoni) spreat, while German typesetters preferred gothic types. But long passages of lower case words are hard to read in gothic type, thus typesetters started to use more upper case letters here and there. Even very old German prints from the 1500ies already show much more upper case letters than contemporary English, French or Italian prints.

When it comes to the numbers, it only becomes interesting from 21 onwards. While in English from twenty onwards the number of tens and then the number of units is mentioned first (twenty-one), in German it is the other way around (one and twenty).

The sentence "my house is green" is pronounced exactly the same in the southern German dialects (except for the pronounciation of the letter "r") and has the same meaning. For the German "r", try gargling, that's where it's pronounced, with the soft palate. "Apple" is also "Appel" in many dialects. In Middle Age England, both languages were even much closer, before the Great Vowel Shift (the vowels were pronounced like in German, for instance "i" was pronounced "ee", "u", "oo", etc.). This shift didn't happen everywhere at the same time, so there are places in the UK where vowels are still pronounced the old way, like some places in Scotland, where "child" is pronounced like "chilled". After the invasion of Britain by William the Conqueror (in 1066), French became the language of the nobility (many, like King Richard Lionheart, didn't even speak English: he was born in France, to a French mother), and so, many French words entered the English language, and they are still used today, but often spelled differently. That's a very simplified explanation, though. There are other interesting videos that go deeper into it, check them out.

If you would know old german languages like native Northern "Friesisch" or "Plattdeutsch" you would find it really similar, the angels and saxons came from northern germany and denmark. There are words in english who came from the times, the french took england and put their vocabularys into the english language...

Hey Ryan, did you realize, that pineapple is a actually a weird compound-word? Because of pine and apple... 😅 The german word Ananas is just more similar to the latin botanic word "Ananas comosus" or "Ananas sativus" Yo asked, why we use capital at the beginning by words like Löwe, Apfel and more? For example in German is a rule to write noun, substantive, proper name, polite form, the first word of a sentence with capital in the beginning. Even writing in english often it's happens accidently to me, that I write some words big like in German and have to correct it after posting. 😂

The way he pronounced the German word "Schokolade" in an American accent made it sound French 😂

Your pronounciation got really good!👏 The r sound is a bit like gargling, I find that collecting some saliva in your throat first can really help.🤭 However, the man in the video speaks a very clear High (or Standard) German, which I basically speak too in my region, but I think we only pronounce the r like that when we want to sound particularly "correct"/"clear" or "fancy". But most of the time I think 🤔 people don't really pronounce the r at all (or can't even really do that anymore) and for example "Kürbis" would be more pronounced like "Küabis". In many other regions in Germany and other German speaking countries, the r sound is actually created more with the tip of your tongue, similar to how it is pronounced in for instance Italian or Spanish.

I LIKE watching you learning German! It is fun!😂

First grade boyin Germany: "Why do you spell tiger with a capital T?" Teacher: "Remember what I taught you? Things you can touch with your hands are always written with a capital letter." Boy. " Have you ever touched a tiger?"

Watch out for the difference in German and Germanic, english is Germanic but that does not mean German. Both split from the Germanic language family and got influenced by different languages over the time. For example with Pineapple and Ananas, while both did not come from English or German, they were used by merchants. Pina used by the Spanish to probably refer to "pinecone of the Indians" and nanas from the Tupi word for pineapple. Also the reason you might think about Latin is because we use the Latin Alphabet, but watch out, we use Arabic numbers. :)

The R sound (which you called the throat thingy) can usually be replaced with an A sound. So Kürbis would sound like Küabis. Actually, I barely ever hear the R pronounced that way. So sticking to an American R or just A instead would be fine too

you're pronunciation is much better than at the beginning! really cool :D

2:55 I never understood where on the line in English they made that mistake, because Ananas, sorry pineapple, is an Ananas in just any other language than English, and also Spanish. 🤔 We have quite a few pine trees around, but I never saw growing that on them, only pinecones. :D

For the tricky sounds - the "ch" (like in "ich") is a "teeth sound", while the "r" in "richtig"/"Tiger"/"Bier"/... is a "throat sound" -- and yes we gurgle a bit for the rolling throat r while speaking.

Also have in mind that there are so many dialects. In Swabia, 5 is pronounced like "five". And in Scotland a cow is pronounced like the german "Kuh".

My introduction to German was the tv show "Hogan's heroes", so I went through the exact same shock as Ryan. I was 23 before a German told me that English was a Germanic language. I had never heard that.

In Lower German (Plattdeutsch) and Frisian which are even closer related to Anglo-Saxon and therefore Old English you count like this: Een - ian - one Twee - tau - two Dree - trii - three Veer - fjouer - four Fief - fiiw - five Söss - seeks - six Söben - sööwen - seven Acht - aacht - eight Negen - njüügen - nine Teihn - tjiin - ten Ölven - elwen - eleven Twölf - twaalew - twelve

If you look at a map of the roman empire at its maximum expansion, you will notice that it doesn´t stretch all the way through (modern) germany, only to the rhine river. So the latin language never fully reached the germanic tribes (also the anglo-saxons) and they developed a mostly independant language. French and spanish for example are latin languages because they used to be controlled by the romans. A historian/ someone who studied languages can probably explain that better tho.

Hey Ryan, you are making great progress in your pronounciation! Gratuliere!

This video is basically a cheat-sheet for translating german into english (or vice versa). It doesn't always work but I thought you might find it interesting: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VebSZrHmsI4.html Enjoy!

Hi Ryan, in the 5ṭh century two German tribes, the Angles and the Saxons conquered England which was shattered by wars between the English tribes. It seems to have been rather easy for them to establish their rein. In 1066 the island was conquered by the Normans (Battle of Hastings won by William the Conqurer) who came from France. And so the English language becameca mixture of German and French. Some words were added by the Vikings who tried to conquer England too and nearly succeeded....

cat = Katze, (dog) hound = Hund, green = grün, gift ≠ Gift (means the opposite), maiden name = Mädchen-name (old German Maid); fee ≠ Vieh (sounds a like, but meaning differs) ; black ≠ blank ; is = ist; I = ich; thou = du (you) ; Father = Vater; Mother= Mutter; House = Haus; old English (pig) swine = Schwein; horse ≠ Hengst ; Fox = Fuchs; ox = Ochs; ...ford = ...furt; deer ≠ Tier (dt) ; have = haben (vb) ; blue = blau, red = rot; yellow = gelb (yg)

I really appreciate your curiosity and I think u do a great job for culture understanding. It’s one step to appreciate the other culture, yes it’s also good to criticise in a nice way. I think this kind of actions is always a step to world peace in the long run.

English and german are both writen in the latin alphabet, but are not latin languages (also, latin had a huge influence to both because it was the church-language for centurys). language and alphabet are not tied together, like many people think. For example, croatian, serbian and bosnian are more or less the same language and people can talk wogether with only little problems, but croatian is written always in latin, serbian is officially in kyril (but latin is also found) and bosnian can be written in both :) So people can talk to each other, but sometimes could not read a letter the other one wrote. There is a very good video about how any english-speaking person can help to read and understand german: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VebSZrHmsI4.html Interesting fact about english/german: the more "basic" and "poor man"words are, the more they are the same. Like "Kuh" and "cow". But beef where extremlly expensive during middle ages, so a simple farmer maybe did not eat it during his whole life. Only the noble could afford that - and the noble where french. Richard I from england for example where the 3. generation born in england - but still did not speak a single englisch word. That is why "expensive" things often have french roots instead of germanic: "Beef" origins in the french "boeuf" and is very different from the german "Rindfleisch", while the animal (who was used to pull the plow, but never slaughtered) are of same origin.

That was fun. I love the "horse" sound you were making whenever there was an umlaut, which you were interpreting as a sound in the throat. Not in the throat. Kind of like this: Pferd = pfayird. But the "r" in German is pronounced with a "rolled r". That takes a bit to get used to when learning German. Overall, your pronunciation was pretty good without the over exaggerations. Keep up the good work. Fun video. Peace

Since you asked: English is -so to speak - german with roman and (a bit) celtic mixed in. The Anglos and Saxons (germanic tribes) went to the British islands with their language around 2000 years back, and pushed the originally (since around 1000 BC) resident Celts/the celtic languages to the edges of the British islands (meaning Scotland, Ireland and Wales, thus the celtic name "Britain"). Just as the recently gotten there Romans already did. From around 800 AD the (scandinavian) Normans arrived. (They are also germanic though.) So the english language is a modified/shifted germanic language with roman influences/terms. Therefore the name "english", from the word Anglo. Check out RobWords on that topic!

Funfact: in German and English the numbers 1-20 are said in the same way. They are read from the back to the front 16 - six-teen. But after 20 English reads them from the front to the back. 21 twenty-one. While in German it stays at the back to front. Ein und Zwanzig is 21 but is one twenty. Idk why this changed, but it was something about making it easier convert the spoken number into numbers. Also most languages use the front to back method and there are studies that say back to front is worse, but it probably won't be changed.

I recently saw a sign for a festival that says: "N8 of Music". Sadly this is a stupid case of denglish mixture, and is supposed to say "Nacht of Music", but because it is written in english my english thinking brain reads it as "Neight of Music" every time.

No English was created out of German dialects. It was created by “Angel Sachsen”, a group of German speaking tribes. Both German and English are thus Germanic languages.

There are important differences between english vowels and german vowels: English vowels are often movements between a start position of the mouth (tongue, lips and lower jaw) and a final position. German vowels are mostly one static position to stay in until a certain time is over. Like in english "far", "feet", "truck". For each letter there is a long sound with more tension and a shorter "more lazy" sound. You can identify these short lazy vowels by a doubled consonant afterwards. For example: a --> Schal (long, like in "far") and Schall (short like in "truck"). ä --> quälen (long, like in "bad") and quällen (short, like in "let") e --> Beet and Bett (short, also like in "let") i --> Miete (long, like in "feet") and Mitte (short, like in "mid") o --> Ofen (this long sound doesn´t exist in English) and offen (short, like in often) ö --> Höhle and Hölle (none of them exists in English) u --> Mus (long, like in "mood") and muss (short, like in "look") ü --> Hüte and Hütte (none of them in English) But there are also 3 german vowels that are moving from one position to another. These are called Diphthong: ei --> nein (always long, like in "nine"), au --> Haus (always long like in "house") eu --> Heu (always long, like in "boy")

The problem we have here is that some words have a direct counterpart in the other language, but the meaning changed in the course of time: There is a German word for horse which is closer in resemblance: Ross, but that would be translated into English nowadays as steed. The same is true for dog. In German, we have Dogge, which is called mastiff in English. The word hound is a special dog in German: Jagdhund, a dog used for hunting. In many cases, it won’t do to just compare the exact translation. Take the German translation to an English word and think a bit outside the box and you can often find a similar word. Take for example to die. The German word is sterben. So, think of dying of hunger (to starve) and you have the missing word.

The origins and ramifications of German and Eglish are just very interesting. And it's even more interesting when you're fluent in Low German and can recognize even more commonalities

Your pronunciation of the word "fünf" was excellent!

Interesting. This simple video helps to improve pronunciation a lot.🧐

I love this German speaker. Great voice

Great video 👍🏻

You pronounced Katze 100% perfect like a native german speaker

your "acht" was really good!!!

The world's major Romance languages (aka Latin based languages) are French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. The main 3 Germanic languages are languages like German (duh), Dutch and English. There are a lot more, but those are the ones with most speakers. English just looks really Latin because of it's area of origin very early in history being conquered by the Romans (43 AD to be precise). Add on top of that centuries of Christian - aka Bible influenced - history, you got a language with a large technically foreign vocabulary, but grammatical structure and many words of everyday use are very much still Germanic. It's like hanging a bunch of Christmas ornaments on a Fir. Sure, all the ornaments sure makes it look like Christmas, but at the core of it it's still a normal old Fir.

Funnily enough, the German word 'Pferd' stems from the Latin word 'paraveredus' meaning 'post horse' (eg. for pulling stage coaches) while the English word 'horse' actually comes from the gothic and old high German word 'hros' essentially used (in German) to describe a noble or precious horse.

Langfocus has a couple of videos about the question if English is Germanic

well the numbering is very similar, if you account for the vocal shift that occured mostly over the last 1000 years in both languages if you take "one" and "eins" - eins is the high german version, but there are upper german versions (like bavarian or austrian german ) where you pronouce it "oans" which is pronounced similare "onzee" (with a shorter e at the end) or the two - zwei was actually derived from "zwo" (female), zwee (male) and zwei (neutral) - in today german only zwei survived but "zwo" remained to differentiate from "drei" (three) - in old english this was separated into twa (female), twegen (male) and tu (neutral) where tu and twa merged into two - in upper german mowadays you call it "zwoa" espeially in the case of the t or tw sound, it shifted to a z sound in high german (northern germany especially) and stayed something hybrid in upper german (southern germany, bavaria, austria) for example twig = zweig; twenty = zwanzig; Zwielicht = twilight

some of the words for animals are similar to english words that in indirect ways: monkey = Affe (-> ape). dog = Hund (-> hound), etc.

That remember me that LangFocus made video about english is a creole language because it started as a germanic language and then get under heavy influence under latin with the Roman and later on by the French. Language evolution is a quite fine topic

@Ryan, the fella in the video is from the south. He rolls his R with the tip of the tongue, no gargling in the throat. The rest of germany does the throat R similar to the French.

some rules in German t turned into z or s (two vs zwei) d turned into t (dead vs tot) th turned into d (three vs drei) p turned into pf or f (apple vs Apfel, ape vs Affe) In English gh became silent or turned into an f (eight vs acht) n after vowles became sometimes silent (five vs fünf)

I haven't watched your videos recently and came back to this one. Your German pronunciation improved a lot in my opinion. Great job

example: Lets go! Let us go - lass uns gehen. very similar...

Pineapple is the odd one out, it's called Ananas or a similar word in basically all other languages.

French, italian, spanish, english geman. All super similar. Learned Latin and english in high school and it was ridiculously easy to become fluent in spanish and italian trough an app and community College classes. French not so much since half of their letters are silent

it gets even funnier when you realize or watch some videos about frisian or "plattdeutsch" german dialects. Here in northern Germany just for one example "zwanzig" cann also be spelled in Plattdeutsch: twentich

I find it so funny. I use your channel to learn English while you try to "learn" German and understand our way of life. It's exciting to see how our way of life affects outsiders =D Another big thumbs up for your attempts to pronounce the umlauts correctly! While you ruin your throat in the process, I get a knot in my tongue at your TH xD

You're doing great😊

3:37 More often the r is vocalized like in British English, so most Germans don't even pronounce the guttural r when at the end of a syllable, but make a vowel out of it

Hi here is some language history if you are interested: German laguage The German language is a Germanic language. That means it evolved from the language of the ancient Germanic peoples. It shares this origin with languages like English or Dutch, so they are similar. Almost one hundred million people have German as their mother tongue English language: It developed from the early Middle Ages through immigration to Britain of North Sea Germanic peoples, including the Angles (northern Germany, bordering Denmark) - from whom the word English derives - and the Saxons ( central and eastern Germany, one of the oldest Germanic tribes). The early forms of the language are therefore sometimes called Anglo-Saxon. In the further development came then franconian influences (Franconians were one of the major Germanic tribes from the group of Rhine-Weser (2 rivers in Germany)-Germanic ( origin mainly in the North German lowlands) ---- after the migration of peoples they became today's France and Germany - keyword Charlemagne) and also (500 AD) Dutch. It is certain that German and English as well as Dutch are equally old from the time of the great migration of peoples, in the first millennium of our era. It is assumed that this was around 500 AD Dutch language. Dutch is a West Germanic language. It is derived from Low Franconian (a branch of Low German) and from other Low German dialects and developed in the "Low Lands of the Frankish Empire" - northwest of the Benrath line. French language (first known notes from 842 AD): French basically originated from three different languages: the Celtic, Latin and various Germanic languages. But their origin in turn goes back even further to Asia and lies in Indo-European. Influences of this can still be found in the French language today. so have fun best regards from Germany

I can tell one of your videos is played next in the playlist because of the creaking of your chair in the beginning 😅