English language got it backwards. German is correct.

The real trouble with learning most languages outside of English, is in English, we have a very casual way of approaching our own language. No one speaks with perfect grammar, and slang is extremely commonplace. This is great for English learners, because as long as you get most of the words out, everyone will understand what you meant. In German, if you don't speak it with utmost clarity and if you don't 100% nail the word order, people will look at you as if you have a learning disability.

Quick Google shows English changed it at some point. From Middle English wer, were, from Old English wer (“man”), from Proto-Germanic *weraz, from Proto-Indo-European *wiHrós (“man, freeman”).

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/wer

For me it was der, das, and die

I don't care what that stupid green owl thinks, I'm not gonna learn three different words for "the"

I learned Dutch before I started learning German (having lived in The Netherlands for almost a decade) and they're quite close as languages go (at least for somebody whose mother-tongue is a romance language) so that was pretty useful, but the one thing that really got me a lot in the beginning is that in German, "wie" means "how" but in Dutch "wie" means "who" (and both words sound exactly the same), so I would hear the very common German greeting "wie geht's" (how's it going) and would translate it as "who goes", and even after knowing the meaning properly it would trip me since the mental "circuitry" doing the translation seemed to be the instinctive one I had developed for Dutch.

It also helps if one doesn't try to pronounce German as if it was English 😈

Wait until you see that "see" is lake, and "meer" is sea. It gets me every time as a Dutchman. In Dutch "zee" is sea and "meer" is lake.

Warum? WARUM?*

French - dessous (below) and dessus (above). Utterly indistinguishable for a non-native of course

Can't forget that was means what! Was ist das? is one of the few phrases I can remember from my two semesters of German approximately 20 years ago.

Dunno if someone already mentioned it, but good luck with "umfahren". Depending on the pronunciation you either mean drive over someone/thing or drive around someone/thing lol.

Wieso/Weshalb/Warum = Why

That's why

Wait until you get to the indefinite articles.

Hmmmm weird, I know both languages but I never considered that. The See/Meer being Lake/Sea situation is much more confusing to me, especially since it's the inverse in Dutch.

Wos hoast g'sacht?

Does this mean that a werewolf is just a whowolf in German?

deal with it, English speakers friends.

The Proto-Germanic words these both derived from are hwar (where) and hwas (who). English clearly stayed closer to hwar, but both neither English nor German kept close to hwas.

Americans when they discover that languages evolved in seperate directions:

I've read about people's difficulties learning German. From what I understand every grammatical rule has so many exceptions it just as well not be a rule.

Then theres English, with "I before E, except after C." Weird.

wieso weshalb warum?