Beginning readers in shallow orthographies acquire word reading skills more quickly than in deep orthographies like English. In addition to extending this evidence base by comparing reading acquisition in English with the more transparent German, we conducted a longitudinal study and investigated whether different early reading skills made different contributions to word reading as a function of orthography. Children (n = 133) were recruited from the first year of primary school in New Zealand (age 5;8) and Germany (age 7;2) and from kindergartens in Germany (age 5;0) to provide both age- and schooling-matched samples. Parallel measures of phonemic awareness, vocabulary, decoding skill, and word reading (accuracy) were administered at two time points, 1 year apart. An advantage for orthography and school attendance existed for reading development. Vocabulary made a greater contribution to word reading in English than in German as did decoding skill. Findings underscore the relative importance of vocabulary and decoding skills for early reading in English.