How similar is German to English language? Because the two languages were once the same, the grammar of English and German is quite similar, even if we don't always recognize it so easily in English. Everything that we find difficult in modern German, from cases to gender to movable sentence structure, these all once existed in English. BUT: While there are many similarities at a beginners level, it gets more difficult at a higher level and you encounter more and more FALSE FRIENDS, words which look similar, but have a different meaning. Looking at the English book BEOWULF, one can see that the word BURG (castle in English) is still used, today it is hardly used anymore in English, only in German.