German and English are both languages that are used by a large number of people across the world. Language allows us to convey information to another person, but using the wrong words, or even too many words or too few can lead to miscommunication. While there are efficient ways of communicating with somebody, other ways are less efficient.

German and English have about the same efficiency in communication when looking at how efficiency in speaking (syllable length and word count) to say the same sentence. But when comparing the ease to learn English or German by looking at the ease of learning spelling and pronunciation, German is clearly the more efficient language to learn.

Some languages may be more efficient for communication than others, and here we will look at German and English to see which language may be more efficient in communicating.

The stereotypical German is a highly efficient and punctual person, with a very bad odd of humor, as compared to English speakers. But does the famous German efficiency correlate to the German language as well? Can Germans say more than English speakers, using fewer words?

The Efficiency Of Communicating

The Efficiency Of Speaking

Interestingly, a study (though using a small sample size) titled A cross-language perspective on speech information rate found that there is a relationship between the speed of a language and the amount of information conveyed. It found that the faster the language, the less complex and dense the conveyed information was. This means that fast languages like Spanish used more words to convey the same information as compared to comparatively slower languages such as Mandarin.

What is most interesting here is that although the language may be spoken slower or faster, in general, the speaker in both situations would finish speaking at about the same time. This indicates that the speed at which information is communicated is roughly similar across all languages no matter how many words are used.

A Comparison Of Word Length And Sentence Structure

I’ve created a table below to have a look at typical sentences that might be said while traveling abroad, comparing the German and English versions. There isn’t a noticeable difference in the word count between the two languages for these phrases.

German	Word Count	English	Word Count
Wie geht’s? (Wie geht es dir?)	2 (4)	How are you?	3
Ich komme aus New York.	5	I’m from New York.	4
Wie lange lebst du schon in Amerika?	7	How long have you been living in America?	8
Wann fährt den Zug ab?	5	When is the train leaving?	5
Entschuldigen Sie, ich habe eine Frage.	6	Excuse me, I have a question.	6
Ich würde gerne bezahlen.	4	I would like to pay, please.	6
Gibt es hier in die Nähe etwas Interessantes zu sehen?	10	Is there anything interesting to see in this area?	9
Total	39 (41)	Total	41

On a strict word-for-word count for general sentences, English and German are fairly comparable, although German might use slightly fewer words in some cases.

You’ll notice that some words are bolded in the last two German sentences. This is to highlight one of the potential inefficiencies of German because those words at the end are actually the verbs that drive the entire sentence.

This means you need to wait for the verb at the end of the sentence to be able to put the sentence together. Of course, this verb can be guessed, however, this process can be particularly difficult for German learners.

The literal translation to that final sentence is Is there anything in this area interesting to see? This means that it is not until the end of the sentence that the listener knows exactly what you’re asking. In fact for this sentence, it may be difficult to guess what the verb is going to be and it’s not until you get to the underlined words, interesting to see, before you know what they’re trying to ask.

In most situations, the context will help a great deal and give you a good idea of what the verb is going to be before the sentence is completed. English is usually able to sidestep this issue entirely by placing the verb closer to the front of the sentence, which may put it slightly ahead on the efficiency side of things for sentence structure.

The Efficiency Of Word Length

The last part of efficiency to look at is whether or not German or English is more efficient on a syllable-to-syllable comparison. This is to check if one language uses fewer syllables to say the same thing or if it is roughly similar between both languages.

German	Syllable Count	English	Syllable Count
Wie geht’s? (Wie geht es dir?)	2 (4)	How are you?	3
Ich komme aus New York.	6	I’m from New York.	4
Wie lange lebst du schon in Amerika?	11	How long have you been living in America?	12
Wann fährt den Zug ab?	5	When is the train leaving?	6
Entschuldigen Sie, ich habe eine Frage.	12	Excuse me, I have a question.	8
Ich würde gerne bezahlen.	8	I would like to pay, please.	6
Gibt es hier in die Nähe etwas Interessantes zu sehen?	17	Is there anything interesting to see in this area?	16
Total	61 (63)	Total	55

It’s interesting to see that although English had two more words in total, the total number of syllables is actually less than in German. By comparing information between the two tables, even though English has a couple more words in total, it may actually be faster to say the sentences in English because there are fewer syllables.

A study conducted in 2010 titled Word lengths are optimized for efficient communication indicates that the length of words (measured in syllables) is related to the amount of information the word carries, instead of how commonly the word is used in usual communication.

This study looked at 11 languages and came to the conclusion that shorter words were used for smaller information bites, or for words that were highly predictable in context. This makes sense, as in conversations you don’t want to be spending too much time saying words that everyone already anticipates, or joiner words in sentences.

From these two tables, although they have only a small amount of sentences possible in both languages, it looks like English is come out on top in the efficiency of word length as well as sentence structure.

The Efficiency Of Learning

Now that we have looked at the efficiency of communication in each language, I also want to have a look at the efficiency of learning the languages. Children can easily learn any language as their mother tongue so learning here will mean learning as a second language.

There’s no point in having a language studies efficient at communicating if it’s too difficult to learn. You will often hear from non-English speakers that learning English is quite difficult. Of course, because we grew up speaking English, it’s much harder to see how English is difficult for non-native speakers to learn.

On face value, German is an easier language to learn, as it takes roughly 750 hours to learn, while English takes at least 1000. Based purely on these numbers alone, it would be expected that German is easier to learn, however let us look at some reasons why this may be the case.

If there were two equally skilled people, one learning English is one learning German, one would expect the German learner to overtake the English learner even if they have the same amount of time to study. One of the major reasons for this is the ease with which pronunciation, spelling, and creating compound words are made possible in German. Overall, the learning of German and creating new words is more intuitive in the German language, so once you have got over the initial difficulty and begin to understand how the language works, German comes out on top.

Pronunciation Between English And German

You’ll notice that pronouncing German words, while seeming tricky at the start, is actually quite straightforward. Of course, the German language has a slightly different pronunciation than English, but most German words can be easily pronounced and spelled phonetically.

This means that saying longer German compound words be quite easy once you know to break up the longer words into their individual small words. For example, Wasserkocher is simply Wasser and Kocher put together. So saying Wasserkocher is the same as saying Wasser and Kocher one after the other. The trick is seeing words like Zeitungskiosk and knowing that one word is Zeitung and the other is Kiosk (with an s added for pronunciation).

English on the other hand completely butchers pronunciation and is not nearly as easy as German to simply look at the word and know how to say it. Try explaining to a non-native speaker why words such as, though, cough, tough, and thought are all quite similar in spelling but very different in pronunciation. Even though it takes some time and practice to identify the separate words in longer German words, German definitely wins out on pronunciation efficiency.

Differences In Ease Of Spelling Between English And German

For much the same reason that English is lacking in ease of pronunciation, there are also major weaknesses in spelling. That’s not to say that English is impossible to learn, but in the same way that German words are easier to pronounce, German words are also easier to spell as compared to English words.

German words are spelt mostly phonetically, while English seems to be somewhat more creative in its spelling. Going back to the above example of English words – though, cough, tough, and thought – they are all spelt similarly, however their pronunciation is quite different. This makes learning the spelling and pronunciation rules of English much more difficult than German.

Compound Words

I have written about German compound words previously, but it fits to mention it here again as well. This is part of the magic of the German language and is the reason that spelling is quite easy in German. You can hear a word said that you have never heard before and make a pretty good guess as to how its spelt – even if its a compound word.

I have placed a table from a previous post below, to show the efficiency of the German language in creating compound words by combining two separate words to create new ones. If you would like to know a little bit more about some other quirks of the German language that make it a great language to learn, you can read more about that here.

Word 1	Word 2	Compound word
Hand (hand)	Schuhe (shoe)	Handschuhe (glove)
Ohr (ear)	Wurm (worm)	Earworm (song stuck in your head)
Regen (rain)	Schirm (shield)	Regenschirm (umbrella)
Staub (dust)	Sauger (sucker)	Staubsauger (vaccum)
Wasser (water)	Kocher (cooker)	Wasserkocher (kettle)

That’s not to say that English does not have compound words, but they are much less frequently used or created compared to German. Some English compound words that we do use are words like aircraft, daybreak, eardrum. These are simply less frequently used to create new words as compared to German.

This means that learning a new word for an object may be more difficult in English if it is not a compound word, because the word that is used may not actually relate to what it is describing.

Overall German is clearly more efficient with regard to the spelling and pronunciation of words in its language. There is good news though. If you’re an English speaker learning German, you’ve got a much easier job, and as you learn German, you can marvel at how inefficient English is in comparison.