German Vocabulary
German and English have many words in common. Often at times it is only slight changes that you would have to make to let you understand a German word. Do you think you can make out the meaning of...
German and English have many words in common. Often at times it is only slight changes that you would have to make to let you understand a German word. Do you think you can make out the meaning of the following words? Try to change the marked letters and be a bit creative with the vowels.
Buch - Rechen - wach - sprechen - brechen
How are German and English words related?
Of course it's not always this simple but it's always worth a try. Did you find the letter k in the above examples?
This is just one example of how little it takes to make use of your knowledge to speed up your German learning. I will not bother you with a list of possible changes as that would be way too passive for smarter German learners. I would like to challenge you and make this an exercise:
How does the exercise work?
Take a thorough look at the words on the next page and write them on a piece of paper. Write those that seem to follow the same change pattern in columns or groups and name the group like this:
Group Name: ch > k
Buch - book
Rechen - rake
wach - (a)wake
sprechen - speak
brechen - break
There are 8 categories in which you can sort them. Should you have more or less, check your results again. Feel free to post your results in the comments like this:
Group 0: ch > k (5)
Group 1:
...
The number in parentheses gives the amount of words that belong to that group that you have found. You will get my results when you post yours in the comments ^^.
Everything clear? Then here you go. Your list of German words. Find those who belong together and name the groups. Try to find out their meaning. Some of them are tough but not too many and others may appear in several groups. Those are marked with a little star (*).
By the way: The words are wildly mixed, not like in the above example. You will need a piece of paper and a pen. And you may want to print out the next page. Ready? Then unlock your hidden German vocabulary now:
(See image with word list on the blog post)
Viel Erfolg and let me know how it went.
Yours Michael
Frequently Asked Questions
Are German and English words similar?
Yes - both are Germanic languages and share hundreds of cognates where only a letter or two has shifted over the centuries.
