'Speak' dropped its 'r' through metathesis — German preserved it in 'sprechen.' Same word, different path.
To say words in order to convey information, opinions, or feelings; to talk or utter words.
From Old English 'sprecan' (earlier 'specan'), from Proto-Germanic *sprekaną, of uncertain PIE origin. The word underwent metathesis — a swap of consonant positions — from 'sprecan' to 'specan' and back in various dialects. One proposed PIE connection is to *spreg- (to speak, to scatter), related to the idea of 'scattering' words.
Old English alternated between 'sprecan' and 'specan' due to metathesis — the transposition of the 'r' — and English ultimately settled on the simpler 'speak' while German kept 'sprechen,' making this one of the clearest cases where the two languages diverged from the same word through a simple consonant swap.