English and German are close cousins — both West Germanic languages descended from the same ancestor about 1,500 years ago. That shared origin means you already know an enormous amount of German vocabulary before your first lesson: thousands of words are cognates, related forms that look and sound alike. Even better, the differences between the two languages are not random. A regular set of sound shifts separates them, and once you know the pattern you can often predict the German word from the English one. This page shows you how to mine that shared inheritance — and where to be careful, because not every look-alike is a friend.
The free vocabulary you already have
Start with the words that barely changed. These are the bedrock of everyday speech — body parts, family, nature, basic qualities — and they survive almost intact:
| German | English | German | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| Haus | house | Hand | hand |
| Buch | book | Finger | finger |
| Wasser | water | Arm | arm |
| Mann | man | Sohn | son |
| Mutter | mother | Vater | father |
| Garten | garden | Freund | friend |
| Sommer | summer | Winter | winter |
| gut | good | warm | warm |
Verbs follow the same pattern: bringen (bring), singen (sing), trinken (drink), kommen (come), finden (find). Remember that German capitalises all nouns — that is why Haus, Wasser, and Garten wear capitals while the adjectives gut and warm do not.
Mein Freund trinkt Wasser, und ich bringe das Buch ins Haus.
My friend is drinking water, and I'm bringing the book into the house.
Im Sommer ist der Garten warm, im Winter ist er kalt.
In summer the garden is warm, in winter it's cold.
The High German sound shift: a prediction machine
Around 1,500 years ago a chain of consonant changes — the Second (High German) consonant shift — swept through the southern German dialects that became Standard German. English did not undergo it. That is why the two languages diverged in a regular way, and the regularity is what you can exploit. Learn these five correspondences and you can guess at words you have never seen.
| English sound | German sound | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| t | ss / z / tz | water → Wasser, eat → essen, that → das, to → zu, tongue → Zunge, sit → sitzen |
| p | pf / f / ff | apple → Apfel, pepper → Pfeffer, ship → Schiff, sleep → schlafen, help → helfen |
| k (hard c) | ch | make → machen, book → Buch, week → Woche, I → ich, milk → Milch |
| d | t | day → Tag, do → tun, dream → Traum, red → rot, deep → tief |
| th | d | thing → Ding, three → drei, thank → danken, brother → Bruder, the → der |
Watch the machine work in one direction. English tooth: the t shifts to z, and the final th shifts to d — predict Zahn? Close enough to recognise instantly (the vowel wandered, but the consonant skeleton is right). English foot, with its final t → German Fuß (the t became ß). English water → Wasser; eat → essen; make → machen.
Ich esse einen Apfel und trinke ein Glas Milch.
I'm eating an apple and drinking a glass of milk.
Am Tag schläft die Katze, in der Nacht macht sie Lärm.
During the day the cat sleeps, at night it makes noise.
International vocabulary: the second free gift
On top of the Germanic core, German has borrowed the same Latin- and Greek-based international words that English uses. These are often spelled almost identically (with German capitalisation on the nouns) and need only a German pronunciation:
Ich brauche die Information für meine Präsentation an der Universität.
I need the information for my presentation at the university.
Das Telefon, der Computer und das Internet sind moderne Technik.
The telephone, the computer, and the internet are modern technology.
Many of these end in predictable suffixes: English -tion → German -tion (Nation, Situation, Position), English -ity → German -ität (Universität, Qualität, Aktivität), English -ic → German -isch or -ik (Musik, Politik, fantastisch). Recent borrowings come straight from English — Computer, Job, Team, Meeting, downloaden — and are treated in detail on the anglicisms page.
Where the trick breaks: false friends
The cognate shortcut is powerful precisely because it usually works, which makes the failures dangerous. False friends are words that look related but mean something different, and over-trusting a look-alike is the classic intermediate error. A handful you must un-learn:
| German word | Looks like | Actually means |
|---|---|---|
| aktuell | actual | current, up-to-date |
| bekommen | become | to receive, to get |
| Gift | gift | poison |
| Rat | rat | advice / council |
| also | also | therefore, so |
| Chef | chef | boss |
Ich bekomme morgen ein Paket.
I'm getting a parcel tomorrow — NOT 'I'm becoming a parcel'.
Das ist die aktuelle Situation.
That's the current situation — NOT 'the actual situation'.
Treat the cognate shift as a hypothesis generator, not a guarantee: it gives you a strong guess that you then confirm. The false-friends page collects the full danger list.
Common Mistakes
❌ Ich werde ein Geschenk bekommen — ich werde glücklich. (meaning 'I will become happy')
Confusing bekommen (receive) with werden (become).
✅ Ich bekomme ein Geschenk und werde glücklich.
I'm getting a present and I'm becoming happy.
❌ Danke für das schöne Gift!
Wrong — Gift means 'poison', not 'present'. You've thanked someone for poison.
✅ Danke für das schöne Geschenk!
Thanks for the lovely gift!
❌ Das wasser ist kalt.
Wrong — Wasser is a noun and must be capitalized.
✅ Das Wasser ist kalt.
The water is cold.
❌ Ich make mein Buch fertig.
Wrong — the verb is machen (k → ch), not the English 'make'.
✅ Ich mache mein Buch fertig.
I'm finishing my book.
Key Takeaways
- English and German share a huge Germanic core: Haus, Wasser, Hand, gut, bringen, singen — free vocabulary from day one.
- The High German consonant shift is regular: t → ss/z (water/Wasser), p → pf/f (apple/Apfel), k → ch (make/machen), d → t (day/Tag), th → d (thing/Ding).
- "Un-shift" the consonants of a new German word to guess its English meaning — the consonant skeleton is reliable, the vowels are not.
- International Latin/Greek words (Information, Universität, Telefon) and recent English loans are a second free layer.
- The shortcut fails on false friends (bekommen ≠ become, Gift = poison) — use cognates as a hypothesis, then verify.
Now practice German
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning German→Related Topics
- False Friends (Falsche Freunde)B1 — The highest-impact German-English false friends — words that look like English but mean something different — with the trap, the true meaning, and the word you actually wanted.
- Borrowing, Anglicisms, and InternationalismsB2 — How German absorbs foreign words: assigning gender and capitalization to anglicism nouns, conjugating borrowed verbs German-style, the Latin/Greek learned suffixes, and the pseudo-anglicism trap (das Handy, der Beamer) — English-looking words that aren't English.
- Word Families: Building Vocabulary from RootsB2 — How one German root spawns dozens of related words through prefixes, suffixes, and compounding — and how to decode and generate them all.
- Tricky Consonants: w, v, z, j, sA1 — Five German consonant letters that look English but sound different — w = [v], v = [f], z = [ts], j = [j], and voiced s = [z] — and how to retrain them as a set.
- Capitalization of NounsA1 — Why German capitalizes every noun mid-sentence — and how to spot when an adjective, infinitive, or other word has been turned into a noun and must be capitalized too.