of German, french, and Latin, which is the easiest to learn?

Question

i have high school scheduling coming up and i dont know what foreign language to take. i have to take two years of it...so there's another part to it.
i know it depends partialy on the teacher i get, but is any one of the languages easier to learn?

Answer 1

I would say there are six factors as to which one will be easiest to learn for you:

1) Which one would be most useful or attractive to you personally (for whatever reason, be it, it will help you get into a better college, you have links with people who speak that language, you'd like to be able to speak it when you go on holiday in countries that speak that language, you're interested in or feel an affinity to the people(s) who speak/spoke that language, you like the sound of one of those languages)? Having a motivation of any sort will make the language easier for you to learn without you putting any extra effort in.

2) Do you like subjects where you learn rules and use logic, like maths and science? If you do, pick German or Latin. If you don't pick French.

3) Do you want a language with which you will be able to speak to people and communicate with them, or would you prefer an intellectual exercise where you read and write a lot and find out how people lived in the past, but rarely speak to anyone alive now? If yes to the first part, pick French or German, if yes to the second, pick Latin.

4) What have you heard about the teachers that would be teaching the subject? A good teacher who encourages you makes all the difference. Particularly with a modern language, it will be important to repeat things a lot and be able to have a go without worrying at all that you might have got it wrong (everyone gets things wrong a lot when they learn a language, languages are like that, what you need is a teacher who's pleased you made an effort and notices which bits you got right, not just the bits where you said something completely backwards with pronunciation that meant you somehow managed to say goat instead of brother)

5) If you think you might want to be a scientist take German

6) If you think you might want to be a physician or a lawyer take Latin

Answer 2

even though english is a germanic language, a vast majority of english words are derived from latin, and i find latin fairly simple. I'm in the ninth grade and i think my vocabulary has increased already from the year or so i've been in it. latin also gives you a headstart to all other romance languages, such as spanish, french, portuguese, romanian, and italian.
for high schoolers, there is also jcl (junior classical league). most states hold annual conventions. there also is a national convention each summer, where you travel to a college anywhere in the country.
http://aclclassics.org/index.html and http://www.njcl.org/ may help you out. Good luck!

Answer 3

I personally took 3 years of Latin and didn't find it too hard to pick up just like any other language, but I found it quite easy since alot of the english language is derived from latin so alot of the words are common

Answer 4

People say that it is good to know Latin, because it's the mother of many languages... for example, German. It may be a dead language, but they say that it gives you a solid ground later on to learn other languages.

Answer 5

I have taken Latin for almost three years now, and I happen to love it. While I think it can be hard sometimes, and, yes, it is a dead language, it's where many English words have come from and it's a lot of help for SATs.

Answer 6

German.
tried French, Italian and Spanish to no avail.
found German infinitely easier to learn.

Answer 7

German. It is quite similar to English. I found french really difficult and Latin is dead so it is pointless.

Answer 8

In theory, French is the easiest, but I'd recommend you tackle one of the two others.