German and English Linguistics

German and English Linguistic Differences

The English language and German language are two of the most popular languages spoken across the globe. English is the 3rd most popular language in the entire world with roughly 365 million speakers. German has a total of 92 million native speakers, with about another 80 million that know German as their second language. There are 88 sovereign states in total where English is considered an official language including India, United Kingdom, Pakistan, and the United States. Whereas for German, there are six sovereign states that count German as an official language, that list includes Germany, Belgium, and Austria. German and English languages are apart of the same Indo- European language family. The goal of this paper is to deeply look into and study the differences between the German and English grammar. The English language is classified as a West Germanic language. It originated as an Anglo- Frisian dialect; and was later introduced to Britain by Germanic invaders who spoke Anglo-Saxon. Due to Scandinavian invasions in the 8th and 9th centuries, Norse was introduced to England. This new language resembled Anglo-Saxon; however, it was different enough to introduce new words, such as they and them. It also caused many complex conjunctions and declensions to vanish. The last major change in the English language arrived from the Norman invasions, which brought Norman French. “In the day to day need to communicate, the common language became English, but with a large number of French words” (Boeree, 2004).Many consider English to be a borrowing language, or a language that gathers words and grammar off of many other languages, after its evolution it adopted many words after languages such as German, Latin, Dutch, Greek, and French (Boeree, 2004). The German language, similar to English, is classified as a West Germanic language. It all starts with the High German consonant shift throughout the migration period, separating Old High German dialects from Old Saxon. Old Saxon at that moment is a part of the North Sea Germanic cultural sphere, and Low Saxon was to collapse under German rather than Anglo- Frisian influence during the Holy Roman Empire. As Germany was separated into many different states, the lone influence working for a standardization of German for some hundred years was the common request of writers to be understood by as many readers as possible. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a complete standardization of the German language in its written form, while the Deutche Buhnensprache had created rules for the German language three years prior. Written works and media are now nearly all produced in Standard German, often called High German, which is understood in all regions where German is spoken (Wikipedia, 2013).
The English language is represented by 26 letters that create roughly about 50 unique sounds. German is comprised of the same 26 letters as English with 4 more different letters, which totals to 30 letters. The pronunciations of these new letters do not exist in the English language. The ‘W’ in German sounds similar to the ‘V’ in English, whereas the ‘V’ in German sounds like the ‘F’ in English (Bauer, 2013). From about the 9th century, English has been written in the Latin script, which replaced Anglo-Saxon. Containing 26 letters, English writing also comprises two ligatures, some usage of diacritics (usually in loanwords), and the rare usage of a diaeresis to indicate that two vowels are pronounced separately. Orthography, or the spelling system of English is multilayered, with elements of French, Latin, and Greek spelling on top of the native Germanic system. English spelling is not a dependable indicator of pronunciation and vice versa (Wikipedia, 2013).
The sound system of English consists of about 2/3 consonants, which are either voiced or voiceless depending on which sounds surround them (Ward, 2010). The German letter ‘ß’ is pronounced as a double ‘s’ sound, and is the only letter that will never be at the beginning of a word (Bauer, 2013). The English and German languages both take on a subject, verb, and object word order (SVO). The sentence ‘I see you’ in English translates perfectly to ‘Ich sehe dich’ in German. The ‘I’ or ‘ich’ in that sentences is the subject, ‘see’ and ‘sehe’ being the verb, while ‘you’ and ‘dich’ are the objects. Almost all of the languages in the world have a word order that begins with the subject, more than 75 percent! It also is the most common order developed in Creole languages, possibly suggesting that it may be more initially obvious to human psychology (Wikipedia, 2013). German language has had a history of orthographic problems, which come out of the struggle between its essentially eight hundred year old writing system and its contemporary phonology. In other words, the conservative spelling rules for German are simply out of touch with its contemporary pronunciation and, as a result, it is almost impossible to determine the spelling of a word solely based in its sound. There have been multiple attempts to reform German spelling over the centuries, but slight advancement has been made so far. The German writing system uses five diacritic or accent marks with its alphabet. The accent marks create phonetic, semantic, or etymological meanings for words (GPI, 2013). The German language differentiates three genders: neuter, masculine, and feminine. These three genders can be displayed in both indefinite and definite articles. Plural definite articles are identical for all genders and there is no indefinite article for plural nouns. Numerous studies have shown that gender assignment is not arbitrary in German, but that the noun’s phonology symbolizes an indication to its gender (Eichler, Jansen, & Muller, 2013). From about the 9th century, English has been written in the Latin script, which replaced Anglo-Saxon. Containing 26 letters, English writing also comprises two ligatures, some usage of diacritics (usually in loanwords), and the rare usage of a diaeresis to indicate that two vowels are pronounced separately. Orthography, or the spelling system of English is multilayered, with elements of French, Latin, and Greek spelling on top of the native Germanic system. English spelling is not a dependable indicator of pronunciation and vice versa (Wikipedia, 2013). Though sounds and letters may not correspond in isolation, spelling rules that take into account syllable structure, phonetics, and accents are 75 percent or more reliable. Occasional phonics spelling advocates claim that English is more than 80 percent phonetic. However, English has fewer dependable relationships between sounds and letters than many other languages; one example is the letter sequence ‘ough’ can be pronounced in 10 different ways including ‘oh’ and ‘ugh’. The consequence of this complicated orthographic history is that reading can be challenging. It takes a longer time for students to become completely fluent readers of English than of many other languages, including German, French, and Spanish. With consonants, the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation is fairly regular; however, with vowels, correspondences are extremely irregular. There are many more vowel phonemes in English than there are vowel letters. This means that diphthongs and other long vowels frequently need to be indicated by combinations of letters (for example, the ‘ay’ in stay and ‘oa’ in boat), or using a silent ‘e’ (such as ‘e’ in cake or note) or a similar device. Even these devices are not used consistently, so consequently vowel pronunciation remains the principal source of irregularity in English orthography (Wikipedia, 2013). Morphology is the identification, examination and description of the structure of a given language’s morphemes and additional linguistic units, such as root words, affixes, parts of speech, intonations, or implied context. Of 43 nominal inflections that existed in Old High German, only 9 of them survived in the modern language. The German tongue remains much more flective than its relatives English or Dutch: the noun preserves four cases, adjectives can have strong and weak forms, pronouns and articles are also declined (Bizland, 2013). Modern English nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and verbs are inflected. Prepositions, adverbs, interjections, and conjunctions are invariable. Most English nouns have plural inflection in (-e)s, but this form shows variation in pronunciation in the words horses (with a final ‘iz’ sound), dogs (with a final ‘z’ sound), and cats (with a final ‘s’ sound). Seven nouns have mutated plurals, such as man to men and mouse to mice. Three have plurals in –en including ox to oxen and child to children. Some plurals remain unchanged such as deer, sheep, and moose. Five of the seven personal pronouns have distinctive forms for subject and object. Adjectives have distinctive endings for comparison, with several irregular forms (Potter, 2013).
English has been subject to an enormous degree of regional dialect variation for many centuries. Its global extent now means that an enormous number of dialects and English- based creole languages and pidgins can be found all over the world. There are numerous varieties that include Scouse, Geordie, and Cockney within British English; African American Vernacular English (Ebonics) and Southern American English within American English; Newfoundland English within Canadian English. English, being a pluricentric language, has no central language authority, and because of that there is no one variety that is considered to be correct or incorrect (Wikipedia, 2013).
English speakers have several different accents, which can often signal where the speaker is native to or which variety he speaks. In the United States alone we can many a times figure out where a speaker is native to just based on them speaking. To me, Southern accents and New England accents are what stand out to me the most because they seem to differ the most from what I am used to hearing.
The German dialects are the traditional native varieties. They are traditionally tracked back to the different Germanic tribes. Many of them are just barely understandable to someone who knows only standard German, since they frequently differ from standard German in syntax, lexicon, and phonology. The varieties of German are often times referred to the different local varieties of the pluricentric standard German. In certain regions, they have replaced the traditional German dialects, especially in Northern Germany (Wikipedia, 2013). The German and English languages have many similarities and differences in their grammar. Sounds, syntax, their writing systems, morphology, variations, bilingualism, and endearment can make related languages very different. German and English are in the same language family, but do not sound related at all. Linguistics is the difference that makes languages unique and exciting to be able to learn and tell the differences between the endless number of languages which makes up our world.

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Eichler N, Jansen V, Müller N. Gender acquisition in bilingual children: French–German, Italian–German, Spanish–German and Italian–French. International Journal Of Bilingualism [serial online]. October 2013;17(5):550-572. Available from: Academic Search Premier, Ipswich, MA. Accessed November 15, 2013.