Both are a bit akin to English. German is closely related with it and French had a heavy influence on the English language. But they are far more complex and diverse than English. Like the French articles "le, la, les" and German "der, die, das, des, dem, den" are all equal to English "the". Also, nouns have genders. In French, a baguette is a "she" while in German a tank is a "he" and a girl an "it". Adjectives get different endings for the gender, number and case of their noun, German has 16 possible combinations. In French, there is a huge difference between the spelling and pronunciation of a word, but luckily in German, there isn't.