German and English are close relatives—both belong to the Germanic language family. This is a big help for those who already know English, but in a different way than many people expect.
Where the kinship really helps: basic vocabulary
Many everyday words are strikingly similar: Haus (house/casa), Wasser (water/água), Buch (book/livro), Milch (milk/leite), "trinken" (drink/beber). This shared basic vocabulary provides a real “head start” that completely unrelated languages don’t offer.
Where the similarity is misleading: grammar, not vocabulary
English has lost almost its entire system of cases and grammatical gender that German has retained—so knowing English does not prepare you at all for the accusative, dative, or the three genders. Worse still: English word order (always subject-verb-object) does not prepare you for German’s flexible word order with the verb in the second position.
False cognates between German and English
Gift (poison in German, present in English) is the classic example. Rat (advice in German, rodent in English) is another. Those who already know English need to be on the lookout for these specific pitfalls—more so than those coming only from Portuguese.
The real advantage: less fear of the language
Perhaps the greatest benefit of already knowing English isn’t linguistic, but psychological: recognizing familiar words reduces the feeling of a “completely foreign language” right from the start, which helps maintain motivation during the first few weeks.
Practical conclusion
Knowing English gives you a real advantage in basic vocabulary, but zero advantage in grammar—treat German as a language with its own rules, not as “English with a strange accent.”
Take advantage of the similar vocabulary, learn grammar from scratch
DeutschBloom explains German grammar in real-life contexts, with native audio—without assuming you already know the rules just because you speak English.
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