Your first German sentence, word by word
How most people introduce themselves. The line under each word gives its English meaning; choose a word to see why it works the way it does.
Four features that make German German
German shares much of its vocabulary with English, but four features of its grammar are new to English speakers. Each one follows clear rules, and the course teaches them in this order.
The course map, A1 to C2
Six levels on the CEFR, the European scale used by every German exam. Choose a level to see what you will be able to do and the lessons that get you there.
Words you already know
English and German both descend from the same ancestor language, so thousands of everyday words are cognates: words with a shared origin that still look or sound alike. Over the centuries, a few consonants shifted in regular ways. Once you know the shifts, you can often guess a German word from its English cousin.
| English sound | German sound | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| th | d | thing → Ding, three → drei, thank → danken |
| d | t | day → Tag, drink → trinken, door → Tür |
| t | z / ss | ten → zehn, tongue → Zunge, water → Wasser |
| p | pf / f | apple → Apfel, pepper → Pfeffer, ship → Schiff |
| k (in the middle or end) | ch | make → machen, book → Buch, week → Woche |
| v / f | b | have → haben, give → geben, live → leben |
German nouns always start with a capital letter, as you can see in Wasser and Buch. Other languages’ links to English are compared in language comparisons.
Where German is spoken
German is the most widely spoken first language in the European Union, with around 95 million native speakers. It is official in Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein, and shares official status in Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg. All write the same Standard German, called Hochdeutsch; spoken accents vary more.