What’s the difference between ‘kennen’ and ‘weten’?

For those who speak a Latin language, the difference won’t be that hard to grasp.

In most Latin languages there’s also two verbs to describe how you know something.
For instance in French, there’s ‘savoir’ and ‘connaître’ or in Portuguese conhecer and ‘saber’ and so on.

Same goes for other Germanic languages such as German, Swedish or Danish.

But the English equivalent, ‘to know’ is one singular verb.

However, as most of us know, there’s a difference!

Let’s have a look at Dutch!

Kennen is commonly used to express you’re familiar with things, or you know something to a deeper extend.

Examples are:

People

Ik ken mijn broer heel goed.

Languages

Ik ken Nederlands heel goed, het is mijn moedertaal.

Location

Things

Weten is commonly used to express you have factual knowledge or data on something.

Or to say how you know how to something.

Examples are:

Factual knowledge or data

Ik weet het adres.

Knowing how to do something

Ik weet hoe ik een leuke presentatie maak.

Fun fact!

Old English arose from Germanic languages, in some regions in Scotland they still use ‘kennen’ in a sense of ‘to make known’ or ‘to know’.

 What’s the difference in your native language?

Laat het ons weten! 😊