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YourFriendlyNeigborhoodJohn's avatar

Is German a difficult language to learn?

Asked by YourFriendlyNeigborhoodJohn (20points) February 18th, 2022
12 responses
“Great Question” (3points)

I am taking German classes to learn the language. I want to know if it is a hard language to learn and about how long it will be until I am comfortable speaking and making small talk in German.

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rebbel's avatar

Depends on one’s mother tongue, one’s ability to learn languages in general (some have it easy, others less so),and possibly also one’s age.
For me, being Dutch (neighbor of Germany, and speaking a language from the same group of languages), it was not too hard, when I was taught it in school.
It really depends.
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Recently I came upon a list of languages and the difficulty speakers of certain languages had with certain other languages (say, Thai have difficulty with Spanish, but French have less difficulty with Spanish).
I’ll have a look if I can find it.

rebbel's avatar

Not what I had in mind; still interesting for you, I think.

And this link might be as well.

Inspired_2write's avatar

“Moreover, the English language is part of the family of Germanic languages, which also includes German, of course. ”( number 2 Getting great with German)

From this link:

https://www.europelanguagejobs.com/blog/easiest-languages-to-learn.php

ragingloli's avatar

Not at all. For me it was super easy, barely an inconvenience.

longgone's avatar

^ Das @ragingloli is German, so does not count.

Yes, it’s hard. Depending on your native tongue, of course. But, I mean, take the articles…there’s die, das, der, den, des, and dem. In English, they are all “the”.

According to this map, though, you could do much worse! Good luck studying – oh, and I very much recommend Easy German, the videos and the podcast.

bob_'s avatar

Es ist zu fucking kompliziert!

The grammar is a huge pain, and it requires a lot of practice it (use it or lose it), but it’s not impossible! Also, I’ve noticed most Germans become much friendlier when you try to speak in German (outside of Germany), but then the same is true for other languages.

Viel Glück!

Jeruba's avatar

I took four years of German in high school and college and did not find it difficult. Much of my vocabulary has faded in the decades since then, and I’ve forgotten the genders of quite a few nouns. I still remember the grammar, which made sense to me, separable prefixes and all. I also learned to read Frakturschrift, which I thought was lovely. I was not aware of the politics of it.

Once I had a conversation with a Finnish woman who spoke English very fluently. She told me that she had found English easy compared with German.

I’d say the relative difficulty is in the learner, not the language, just as some of us (not I) take readily to math or chemistry or physics.

SnipSnip's avatar

It is one of the less horrible for the English speaker. I don’t think any language is easy to learn. If you move to a country where you do not know the language, all indications are you learn it pretty quickly. I have a friend in a French-speaking nation. She learned to speak English beautifully by watching movies in English with subtitles in French. She took night classes to learn how to write English.

Jeruba's avatar

I don’t think any language is horrible. I think all languages are fascinating. You can learn plenty from a little study of any language, even if you’re focused on learning about the language and its structure and features rather than trying to gain enough mastery to communicate in it. Just knowing, for instance, that there exists a language in which our notion of “either/or” is not expressed as a duality but rather as a “one among three” concept can shift your view of language and thought in general.

KRD's avatar

Not really. I started to use a website called Rosita Stone and since I started my German language (which I started recently) I have been knowing a small vocabulary of words in German. Here’s the website: https://totale.rosettastone.com/sign_in. We got it through our library and it has been great.

LostInParadise's avatar

I took two years of German in college. I did not find it difficult, but I have forgotten nearly all of it. In contrast, I remember much more of the Spanish I learned in middle school and high school.

raum's avatar

Personally, I’d say harder than Spanish. Easier than any language that doesn’t use the Roman alphabet.

(But that’s coming from a person who’s first language uses the Roman alphabet. And grew up in an area where Spanish is the second most common language.)

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