Similar Languages to German
I have learned German intensively for the last 2 years, and I am wondering if there are languages that are very similar to German that would make transitioning easy. I currently have Dutch and Danish in mind. I think people have misunderstood my question, because I have posed it poorly (as Elliot has pointed out). I am almost fluent in German, I have written literary analyses of Kafka and intend to keep working on my German until I can speak and write like a Native. I want to learn other languages. I am wondering if there are similar languages to German, because then transitioning to that *other* language would be easier. It would be easier to go from knowing German to learning Dutch, than say knowing German and then learning Chinese (for obvious reasons). I hope I am clear this time.

Question

Similar Languages to German
I have learned German intensively for the last 2 years, and I am wondering if there are languages that are very similar to German that would make transitioning easy. I currently have Dutch and Danish in mind. I think people have misunderstood my question, because I have posed it poorly (as Elliot has pointed out). I am almost fluent in German, I have written literary analyses of Kafka and intend to keep working on my German until I can speak and write like a Native. I want to learn other languages. I am wondering if there are similar languages to German, because then transitioning to that *other* language would be easier. It would be easier to go from knowing German to learning Dutch, than say knowing German and then learning Chinese (for obvious reasons). I hope I am clear this time.

Answer

I'm not sure what you mean by "transitioning". Dutch and Flemish are the two languages most similar to German. However, you will have to learn a new language if you study them.
English is similar enough. So, apart from the grammar, German shouldn't really be giving you a lot of trouble. There is no language I know of with a similar grammatical structure to German. The Slavic languages have six cases, as opposed to German's four.
Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian belong to the Germanic group, and are a sub group of their own: Scandinavian. Again, they're different languages, and I still don't get how you intend to "transition".

Answer

As Eliot said, there are several closely related languages. I would add "Schwyzerdütsch" (some kind of German spoken in Switzerland) and Afrikaans. And other, quite different languages, in the neighbourhood.

German learners who learned English before are often attracted by those similarities. But you can't rely on them. Sometimes they match, sometimes they don't. Those people find themselves confused and think German is even more difficult to learn.

Answer

domsala, I hope you're not making that up.

Answer

Learning Chinese after mastering German is not a bad idea... I think native English speakers have more difficulties with pronunciation. Germans have no difficulties reading hanyu pinyin (transliterated language) to zhongwen (spoken language) if they know how to handle "zh/j/q/ch/x".

Answers · 7

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