🇩🇪 → 🇫🇷

How easy is French for German speakers?

Going from German to French (Français) has a composite linguistic distance of 54% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

54% distance FSI Cat I (Easiest) — 600–750 hours

Lexical similarity

18%

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance

81%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity

13%

Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.

Writing-system match

100%

Latin → Latin

Genealogical kinship

40%

Indo-European ↔ Indo-European

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Sample sentences side-by-side

How everyday sentences look in both languages:

🇩🇪 German

Die Universität hat eine moderne Bibliothek und ein wissenschaftliches Zentrum.

🇫🇷 French

L'université a une bibliothèque moderne et un centre scientifique.

🇩🇪 German

Die Musik und die Kunst sind fundamental für die Zivilisation.

🇫🇷 French

La musique et l'art sont fondamentaux pour la civilisation.

Other easy languages for German speakers

The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from German:

Think you can tell them apart?

A quick 3-question check between German and French. No signup.