Is German hard to learn having a good English basis?

Answer 1

It can be tricky at times, for various reasons:

1. German has grammatical gender--masculine, feminine and neuter. English lost its grammatical gender centuries ago, but may still have a few remnants of it (e.g. calling ships "she").

2. German inverts the word order in subordinate clauses. English doesn't make any such modification.

3. German has four grammatical cases (nominative, dative, accusative and genitive), in which the form of the article can change depending on the gender and case. Nouns and adjectives sometimes change their form depending on case.

4. German uses special "umlaut" characters that have different values from their non-umlauted counterparts. They are:
-- ä (similar to "ay" in English, but closer to "é" in French)
-- ö (a sound that does not exist in English, equivalent to French "eu")
-- ü (another sound that does not exist in English; equivalent to French "u")

5. The German sound "ch" does not exist in English, except in some dialects (e.g. in the Scottish word "loch").

6. German forms its plurals in a variety of ways, using the endings R, N and E and sometimes the umlaut but almost never by adding S as in English. This is because S is usually added to convert a noun or pronoun to its possessive form, as in English, but there is no possessive apostrophe in German.

But these are things that generally take some practice. On the whole, given that English and German are related languages, German is relatively easy for English speakers to learn, mostly because there are so many cognates between the two languages. For example:

man (the species)--der Mensch
man (adult male)--der Mann
men--die Männer

brother--der Bruder
sister--die Schwester

I've been learning German through books such as the Berlitz Self-Teacher German and software packages such as A+ German by Transparent Language.

A great way to learn vocabulary is through German pop music. Here are a few examples of artists:

Kira-- http://www.kira-online.de
Juliane Werding-- http://www.juliane-werding.de
Nicoleberger Klug-- http://www.nicole-4-u.de
Wolfgang Petry-- http://www.wolfgang-petry.de

There's one little caveat, though: sometimes the lyricists fiddle around a bit with the word order, and so you sometimes have to rely on case endings and grammatical gender to know what a German song refers to in a given situation.

Finally, there are some good web sites that can help you. I've heard Rosetta Stone ( http://www.rosettastone.com ) is a good resource. One that I use regularly, though, is http://german.about.com , which includes forums in which you can write in or about German. The forums are monitored by people who are fluent in German and willing to help out beginners.

Answer 2

For many people who speak English well, German is still hard. Even though English has a lot of Germanic influence, the way the verbs are conjugated and sentence construction is still pretty different. It just depends on how good you are at learning languages in general. Good luck!

Answer 3

i have been studing german for four years now and still find the grammar a headache! there are cases which don't exist in english anymore and adjectival endings, which i find are the hardest bits to get my head around!

on a phonological level, pronunciation is not hard, and spelling is pretty straightforward. the umlauts are nothing to worry about and if you learn the gender and plural form of words as you go on, it makes such a difference!

i also study spanish and believe that german flows more naturally off the tongue because i am an english speaker wheras it is easier to guess spanish words.

overall... german will be a challenge however good your english is!

Answer 4

Simple German words are very similar to English, since the two languages are closely related. However, the grammar is more complicated.

Answer 5

No. It's not so bad.

After getting past verb conjugation, which all the foreign languages seem to have in droves, sentence construction is almost exactly like english except for one or two cases where the verb gets bumped to the end.

Answer 6

Actually, when I took German in college, it came to me very quickly and easily. The basics were really easy. As you get more advanced, it can be kind of hard.

Answer 7

I have learned when I was studding German , that if you know the old Greek grammar ( not the ancient ) then you will be able to speak perfectly

Answer 8

No, it is not. English is the most difficult language to speak and spell.

Answer 9

not really. i learned it growing up. just keep in mind everything is either males female or neuter, keep them straight and your good to go

Answer 10

noo is easy cause is similar to english