2007-01-04 08:45:32 · 9 answers · asked by anarchy babe 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
It isn't. Once you learn the proper phonetic values for the German letters and the differences to English, your only problem are the long compound nouns, and there we are down to vocabulary, not readability.
German is very easy that way, you learn the rules and keep applying them.
2007-01-04 08:59:22 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Hmmm. I thought it was phenomenally easy to read and speak. English descends from Germanic language, so it should be second nature. There are far less "exceptions" in German than there are in English also. The only thing I have some difficulty reading is the very old script where Ss look like Fs.
2007-01-04 08:50:39 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Reading German is easier than reading English because you have to learn the phonetic stuff once and you can pronounce nearly every word. In English it always changes...
2007-01-04 19:19:03 · answer #3 · answered by tine 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
German grammar is far more complex than English as the changes that occur in the four cases, nominative, accusative. genitive and dative in nouns and adjectives and the influence of prepositions on the nouns that follow them are terribly difficult to master unless you have that type of brain that responds to mathematical formulae.
I can teach my students to speak German in set phrases and do role-plays but once they have to apply the rules of grammar and try to create their own correct sentence patterns, their eyes glaze over. It doesn't help of course that they are not taught beyond the fundamentals of grammar in English, at least not in the Australian education system. I learned English grammar by studying French at school.
2007-01-04 21:08:52 · answer #4 · answered by lizzie 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You can learn to read any language with practice. My guess is that you just haven't read a lot of German.
2007-01-04 09:52:11 · answer #5 · answered by drshorty 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Learning to read German is far less difficult than learning to read English. I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said, according to English spelling, one could spell the sound "fish" as "ghoti" - "gh" as in "laugh/enough", "o" as in "women" and "ti" as in "nation".
Since the pronunciation and the spelling of German are much more closely related than in English, it's much easier to spell and to read for non-native speakers. .
2007-01-04 08:58:21 · answer #6 · answered by Sterz 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
English is the hardest
2007-01-04 08:49:23 · answer #7 · answered by Linda 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I know what you mean. Its confusing when you compare it to englih because its usually scrambled.
2007-01-04 08:47:50 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
probably because they use so many compound words. you have to be able to spot where each word ends.
2007-01-04 08:52:57 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋