Which languages are the ones most closely related to the german language?
86272
Here are three pages I found on this topic:\nhttp://softrat.home.mindspring.com/germanic.html\nhttp://www.ned.univie.ac.at/Publicaties/taalgeschiedenis/en/germaans.htm\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages\n\nTo answer your question, it looks like, from these sources, Dutch and Afrikaans are most closely related to German, and then the Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish), Yiddish, and English are somewhat more distantly related, but still in the same family.
776201
German : lesen\n\nFrench: lire\n\nSpanish: leer\n\nItalian: leggere\n\nCareful, those sites as www.babelfish.com etc are mostly giving very bad or wrong answers
198915
paix french\npeace italian\npaz spanish\nvrede dutch\nειρήνη greek (try to read it:P)
96540
LEO is exquisite for English/German and German/English.\n\nhttp://dict.leo.org/?lang=en&lp=ende\n\nThere is a great forum as well where you can start a query in case of a translation problem or want to discuss any other - cultural or linguistic - issue. It's really fun!\nhttp://dict.leo.org/cgi-bin/dict/forum.cgi?lang=en&lp=ende
390829
Lot's of info here.\nhttp://german.about.com/
728104
Spanish, english, French, some German
569082
No, no, no. Especially not with history. Look into WW2 for more on that. They definitely have  two totally different languages. Their cultures are a lot different.\n\nIn a nutshell, they are not really related at all.
629064
They practice several languages including Icelandic, English, and Nordic languages but German is widely spoken
92391
Well, most of western Europeans speak German.\nThe biggest economy is Germany.\nThe most influential philosophies, music, and innovations are in Austria, Switzerland and Germany..\n\nI am not biased!.. hopefully :P\n\nSearch podcast.yahoo.com for "deutsch lernen" or "learn german".. you'll find some helpful audio lessons..\n\nViel Glueck! (Good luck!)
848987
I vote for emphatic British English , by FAR the most beautiful in my ears.  I just love the rhythm & cadence & intonation of strong British erudite English.  The formalism of it.is so charming.\ncoming in second place to me is the High-German language.   so forceful & direct & powerful.  Makes anything you say sound like a command.  German is a no-nonsense language ideal for military & discipline & command.  and I like that.  \n\nI find the Romance languages boring.  I am not interested in the so-called Mediterranean culture.  I was raised in so-called Eastern mediterranean culture & I didn't care for it.  \n\nI also am charmed by the sounds of Swedish,& Norwegian - also very partial to the sounds of Korean& japanese.& Russian.  I love the cadence & the way they resonate.   And I also am fascinated by the sound of the Greek language in songs & speeches.\n\nI'm sick &tired of hearing how great French & italian are.  I want to differ sharply from this.
354678
As far as sheer numbers, Mandarin by a long shot. The number in parenthesis are the total number of speakers (native and secondary).\n\n   1. Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)\n   2. English (480 million)\n   3. Spanish (320 million)\n   4. Russian (285 million)\n   5. French (265 million)\n   6. Hindi/Urdu (250 million)\n   7. Arabic (221 million)\n   8. Portuguese (188 million)\n   9. Bengali (185 million)\n  10. Japanese (133 million)\n  11. German (109 million)
436128
German and English are very similar to each other. It's similar to learning a new language.
320854
spanish(you can understand alot of languages like:french,portuguese,italian etc...)then english and chinese.
739022
I would say German, like Hans Gruber from Die Hard.
533419
There are three choices -- Scots, Frisian and Dutch.\n\nIt just depends on how you define "different language", and if you think if matters how many speakers the language has.\n\nFirst, the "American" bit is nonsense -- American & British English are clearly dialects of one common language.\n\nLet's also discount various forms of "pidgin English" that have developed in some areas where English is not the native language.\n\nHow about GERMAN? -- No, not quite.  The language we know as German is actually "High German", so-called because it is spoken in the inland, elevated areas (originally spoken in "Prussia", the eastern part of modern Germany, this was the language of Luther), whereas English is more closely related to the "Low German" languages of the lowlands closer to the sea.\n\n1) So the first reasonable candidate is SCOTS, that is "Lowland Scots" or "Ulster Scots" (to distinguish it from the Gaelic language known as Highland Scots).   Some, however, simply treat this is a dialect of English.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language\n\n2) The next closest, and clearly a distinct language is FRISIAN, "spoken by about half a million members of an ethnic group living on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. "\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_language\n\n3) If that's not a large enough group to count, you'd have to go with DUTCH.  (Compare also Low German dialects in the Northwestern part of Germany, such as "Plattdeutsch", and Afrikaans, which was originally a Dutch dialect.)\nhttp://ucl.ac.uk/dutch/why_dutch/index.html\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language#Classification_and_related_languages
551870
German and Japanese----that's easy.  German because my heritage is German, and Japanese because, well, just because.\n\nJoseph S----French and Italian are two European languages!  You're supposed to name a European and an Asian one!
96660
approximately 62 languages