Language comparison
English vs German
Both belong to the Indo-European family; their closest common node in the Glottolog tree: West Germanic. Both are used in: Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland and 7 more.
Relatedness is not mutual intelligibility: languages of one branch can be unintelligible to each other, while very close ones (such as Serbian and Croatian) differ mainly in status and script. That is why we give no “similarity percentage”.
English
- Family and branch (Glottolog)
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Germanic
- Northwest Germanic
- West Germanic
- North Sea Germanic
- Anglo-Frisian
- Anglic
- Later Anglic
- Middle-Modern English
- Macro-English
- English
- Script
- Latin
- Hello / thank you
- hello / thank you
- Speakers (estimate)
- c. 1.7 billion sum over countries per CLDR, including second-language users
- Official (42)
- United States, Nigeria, United Kingdom, Australia, Malawi, Ghana, Liberia, South Sudan, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Gambia, Fiji, Guyana, Solomon Islands, Bahamas, Belize, Barbados, Namibia, St. Lucia, Grenada, Jersey, St. Vincent & Grenadines, Antigua & Barbuda, U.S. Virgin Islands, Dominica, Guernsey, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Turks & Caicos Islands, Micronesia, St. Kitts & Nevis, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Saint Helena, British Indian Ocean Territory, Montserrat, Falkland Islands, Norfolk Island, Pitcairn Islands, South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands
- Co-official (41)
- India, Pakistan, Philippines, Tanzania, Canada, Sudan, South Africa, Cameroon, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ireland, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Eritrea, Hong Kong SAR China, Rwanda, Botswana, Uganda, Puerto Rico, Mauritius, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malta, Vanuatu, Guam, Kiribati, Isle of Man, Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Seychelles, Sint Maarten, Tonga, Nauru, Cook Islands, Burundi, Samoa, Palau, Niue, Curaçao
- Working (3)
- Burkina Faso, Niger, Timor-Leste
- Without status
- widely used in 47 countries, a minority language in 14 countries
German
Deutsch
- Family and branch (Glottolog)
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Germanic
- Northwest Germanic
- West Germanic
- High German
- Upper German
- Middle-Modern High German
- Modern High German
- Upper Franconian
- Global German
- German
- Script
- Latin
- Hello / thank you
- guten Tag / danke
- Speakers (estimate)
- c. 143 million sum over countries per CLDR, including second-language users
- Official (3)
- Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein
- Co-official (3)
- Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg
- Official in a region (3)
- Poland, Denmark, Italy
- Without status
- widely used in 7 countries, a minority language in 12 countries
Where they are spoken
- English 118
- German 1
- both 15
Countries where the language has a legal status or is known by at least 10% of the population (CLDR); countries where it is only a minority language are not shown.