How difficult is it to speak German?

Question

I am going to college next year and would like to learn take a class to learn German (I was born there but don't remember much). I have heard that it is similar to tne english language. How difficult of a language is this?

Answer 1

very difficult. They have genders for all names but no rules for it, so you must memorize every single word! If you don't do that you won't even know the equivalent to the article "the".Before you use the article you must know if the subject is male or female and to know that you must know by heart the gender of all of the 10 quadrillion names there are!
No way you can tell by looking at the word like you do in... in italian for one.
I wasted 2 years of my life on this silly language and all I learned is that the germans are in a total mess, not systematic at all.My girlfriend at the time was a school teacher and she was of the same opinion: they are set to learn everything by heart and not by applying a logic so their language suits them very well.
Besides all this, every German and his dog speak english so learning german in my opinion is a big waste of time.
Yes it is similar teo english in the sense that most english words are incorporated into it, so is latin. After trying german you'll understand how streamlined english really is, and if we must have genders for objects then how perfect italian is.
Took me A YEAR to get an exchange driver's licence for my UK licence, took me 2 weeks in the UK and "only" 3 months in Italy.
good luck

Answer 2

It depends on what you want to achieve, I guess.

I live in the Netherlands and the language there is quite similar to German. I had five years of German in highschool and I've been to Germany several times.

Still I have to say that it is definitely not an easy language to learn. I will grant that it would be pretty easy to learn how to read German when you are an English native speaker as a lot of the words are similar. And it's not that difficult to form a sentence that every German will understand. But to speak it CORRECTLY is an entirely different matter.

- German still uses a case system with 4 different cases, which are used in every single sentence.
- All the prepositions require the use one of the cases
- Many verbs are irregular
- The nouns have genders: they are either masculine, feminine or neutral

etc...

Answer 3

Ok german is kinda difficult. Is not like the people say, you will understand it, is easy. Forget about that. At the moment I'm an exchange host student in Germany. I been living here for 2 1/2 months now.When you read german you could guess some or most of the words because they're so similar to englih. But hearing and talking german is the problem. You see, german pronunciation is so different than english. I know spanish because is my first language and I would say German pronunciation sounds more like spanish but when you write it is like english. When the "er" in german are together is sounds like "ea" ( of the german alphabet, of course). There's a lot of words that changes the songs because of the combinations. "Ei" sounds like when you hit yourself with something and you say Ay!. But is easier to learn german is you have a basic knoledge of spanish because the vocals sounds are the same. The a,e,i,o,u is the same as in spanish and not like english. Right now I know the basic stuff of german but is really hard to understand the teachers in the school and everyone. But if you're very dedicated to the language you can learn it. And the sentences order in german changes. You don't say: Im going to the market. You say Ich will market zugehe. You say it reverse in some cases. So good luck learning German!

Answer 4

I am very astonished to read that quite a few people here find German easy to learn for someone whose native tongue is English. Usually English speakers have enormous difficulties with the German language. The grammar is very tricky (as mentioned above, the gender and case system of the nouns) and the pronunciation too (there are especially two sounds, written like an "o" and a "u" with two dots on them, impossible to pronounce for foreigners).

Answer 5

German is the most closely related language to English. Some words are the same in both languages, just pronounced differently, and some are so closely related that they won't be difficult to remember at all. The word order is different, verbs are conjegated different, and there's the whole die/der/das issue, which makes it slightly difficult for some. It's also a little difficult for some people to get their mouths around the umlauts.

Good luck!

Answer 6

English and German are very equivalent languages. If you're having an overly tough time studying German, your language flair is low. It is simpler for an English speaker to be taught German, than it's for German speaker to be taught English. This is on account that regulations of grammar and conjugation in German are very reduce and dry with few exceptions, even as in English, they're vast and sundry. Many are below a fake pretense that it's convenient for Germans to be taught English on account that such a lot of of them talk it. This is on account that English is a required discipline at their eqivalent of the core tuition degree. Here in America, a core tuition scholar can pick to take German (or a further language) however isn't required to. I desire that is handy :-)

Answer 7

It's quite easy to speak the language after you've been listening for a while. Things you have to remember is every letter of the word is pronounced, so the word Pfeffer (pepper) there is a short 'p' sound before the 'f' and if there's an 'e' at the end of a word it is also pronounced - bitte (please) 'bitta', but for some letters the pronunciation is different in German e.g. 'i' is pronounced like a long 'e', 'e' is pronounced like 'eh' (the 'e' similar to the 'e' in egg) and the 'w' is pronounced like 'v', 'ei' is 'i', 'ie' is 'e', So...German Eis is 'ice' and mean the same thing. Father...German Vater pronounced 'Fawter'. Then there is 'ä', 'ö' and 'ü' you pretty much round your lips to pronounce these letters. The letter 'r' is rolled off the tongue. Hope this helps a little.

Answer 8

i agree with Judith, the grammar is a bit complicated compaired to English, but still.. go for it! Remember that learning to speak correct English for a German is difficult too: they hardly get rid of their accents (as do we, the Dutch). You most probably won't get rid of yours... but who cares, some people think an accent is very charming.
Learning a new language is fun and it teaches you soooo much more than just ordering a beer in a pub in some foreign place!
Good luck!

Answer 9

Both English and German belong to the Germanic Indoeuropean group of languages. The grammar structure is somewhat similar. That being said, you'll still have to study hard! Good luck!

Answer 10

English is a Germanic language, so I think it should be easier for English speaking people to learn than other languages are.