Learning German is not necessarily difficult for English speakers. Although it is complex in some ways, it is simple in other ways. Your ability to learn a language depends on several factors, including interest and motivation for learning German. Before you decide which language you want to learn, consider your motivations for learning the language. There is nothing wrong with giving a language a shot to see if you want to continue, but before you get to this stage, consider why you want to learn it first.

Throughout your language-learning journey, you will inevitably ask yourself if the language you are learning is the wisest choice. Learning any language takes time and discipline. It is not a short-term commitment and there is a limit to how quickly it can be completed. It is similar to going to the gym: it requires consistent, steady effort. Going to the gym once a week to smash out a 3-hour high-intensity session will quickly burn you out and discover it is not a sustainable training method. Instead, going to the gym (or learning a language) 4-5 times a week for shorter sessions will benefit you much more greatly.

Is German Difficult To Learn For English Speakers?

There are many similarities between German and English, such as the alphabet (with a few extra letters) and words that are similar in both languages (man and mann, hand and hand, nine and neun, etc).

There are several aspects of German that are difficult for English speakers at the beginning.

English speakers would be introduced to the concept of gender for nouns – masculine, feminine, and neuter, which are all used to say “the”. This can be difficult to work through, especially when one wonders why calling a tree male but a cow female helps communicate in the first place!

Learning a language is similar to learning chess. It’s easy to learn but difficult to master.

Another particularly new aspect of German is sentence structures that will often send a verb to the end of a sentence. A sentence in English may read “I love chocolate because it is delicious”, but in German would read “I love chocolate because it delicious is” (Ich liebe Schokolade, weil es lecker ist).

Often learners of a new language begin really well but then start to get bogged down in the grammar of a language. It’s important to remember that growing up, you didn’t need to learn grammar in a classroom, it was learned naturally, however, it still takes years as a child before proper sentences are able to be made. Give yourself the time to learn a langague.

One final aspect of German grammar to mention that may be difficult for English speakers are cases and endings.

Cases, called nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive, describe how parts of sentences relate to the verb. The subject (nominative) is doing the verb, the object receiving the action of the verb (accusative), the indirect object benefits from/gets something as a result of the action (dative), and the owner of an object (genitive).

English speakers do not have to worry about cases and it can be quite confusing to pull apart a sentence to identify each part at first. Don’t worry, practice makes perfect.

Is German More Difficult Than Other Languages?

I hope that the small amount of information above does not put you off learning German if you have a particular desire to learn German.

Languages are easier to learn when you have a personal motivation and desire to learn them.

If there is a particular band that you enjoy listening to in that language or form of media that you want to read in its original language, it will be much easier for you to learn that language. If you have been told you must learn the language, your motivation and interest will be much lower and you will find it difficult to learn the language.

Assuming that you have a real desire to learn the language, how much more difficult is German compared to other languages? Let us assume that you are a native English speaker and do not speak any other languages. This is because learning languages gets easier the more languages you know, and non-English speakers may find other languages easier to learn depending on the language they already know.

Is German More Difficult To Learn Compared To:

French

Similar to German, French uses the same alphabet system as English, which gives an English speaker an advantage right off the bat. French only has two genders rather than the three that German uses.

One advantage that German offers English speakers is the verb structure for tenses is slightly easier to understand. In German, the future or past tense can be signified in a similar way to English.

Ich werde ein Buch kaufen     I will buy a book

Ich habe ein Buch gekauft      I have bought a book

French, however, incorporates the tense inside the verb itself which can make it more difficult to learn and use French verbs and tenses correctly.

J’acheterai un livre     I will buy a book

J’ai acheté un livre      I have bought a book

After 69, counting in French becomes complicated.

The German counting system is much easier than the French, in that the German system is very logical, although slightly different to English.

Germans would say 96 as “six and ninety” (sechsundneunzig) and although may be difficult to read at the start, is quite easy to understand.

French, on the other hand, counts in a similar way until the number 70 after which it gets unique. To say the French for 75 for example, the translation comes to “sixty and fifteen”. To say 85 however, you need to say “four twenty-five”.

French pronunciation is tricky for English speakers. This is something that English speakers often take for granted, such as knowing how to pronounce words like though, through, and tough because these are pronunciation rules that we learned growing up.

Learning the pronunciation rules of a language is much tougher, and we forget how much trial and error, immersion and time were spent learning our mother language, it’s easy to become discouraged at how long it feels it is taking to learn the language.

Arabic

Something that may be unexpected is that there are several types of Arabic that can be learned. Although there is Modern Standard Arabic that would be learned and can be spoken in Arabic-speaking countries, typical conversations between friends and in tv shows will be in the Arabic dialect rather than in MSA.

Although German is similar to some degree with speakers of Swiss German and German not always understanding each other, it is much more widespread in the Arabic-speaking world, because there are so many more countries that use the language.

Another difference between Arabic and German is that Arabic doesn’t have an alphabet.

Instead, Arabic has an abjad, which is a group of consonants, in which vowels can be marked, but doesn’t have to be. This is the equivalent of writing sentences in English such as “Ths sntnc my b hrd to rd f y r lrnng nglsh”. You will probably be able to read this as a native English speaker but imagine learning English words this way and trying to learn how each word should sound and what vowels should be used.

Even more than this, the abjad doesn’t use the same letters as the alphabet used in English, making it even more tricky.

This isn’t to say that Arabic is impossible to learn, the grammar itself for everyday conversation is relatively easy, so if you believe you are interested in giving a foreign language system a crack, perhaps Arabic may be the language for you.

Mandarin

Mandarin is spoken by a large percentage of the world and is a great choice of language to learn. There is a wide range of business opportunities that may open up to speakers of Mandarin, however, it is notoriously difficult to master.

Keep in mind that learning Mandarin does not mean that you will be able to speak to every Chinese person you meet, but is viewed as the standard language of China in much the same way that Modern Standard Arabic is the standard language in Arabic-speaking countries.

Like Arabic, Mandarin has a separate writing system to master.

Unlike Arabic, the Mandarin writing system is not an abjad, it is instead a series of characters. There are basic characters that can be put together to create another character, however, while there are about 100,000 characters across its history, Chinese students would learn between 2,500-6,000 while a Chinese learner would need to know about 3,000 to be fluent.

Another difficulty of Mandarin is that it is a tonal language and has four tones. You can say the same word in four different ways and say a totally different word each time.

An example of this is the word “ma”. Using the tones, you can say either

As you can see this is a whole other ball game that German simply does not possess. If you think you will have difficulty with pronunciation, it may be that you will find German easier to learn than Mandarin.

Japanese

As a native English speaker, of course, German would be easier to learn due to the similarities between German and English, while speakers of Chinese would find learning Japanese easier instead because of the similarities between the alphabets.

Is Japanese easier to learn than German? Probably not, given that there are three writing systems to learn, and is considered to be one of the hardest writing systems in the world.

Kanji, one of these writing systems, contains individual Chinese characters each of which has an individual meaning and can be combined to create new words. Similar to Chinese, a learner of Japanese needs to know how between 2,000 – 3,000 to be fluent.

If you only want to speak and listen in Japanese, perhaps it is not as difficult to learn after all.

One major issue in learning Japanese, aside from the writing system, is grammar.

The same as Hindi, and sometimes German, the Japanese use a word order of subject, object, verb, and also similar to German, there is some use of gender, although this is declining.

The Japanese language system incorporates levels of politeness into speech in a way that is much different from English or German. This may be difficult to learn initially and the honorifics change depending on circumstances, such as a shopkeeper speaking to a customer (the customer is highly honoured), or an employee speaking to a CEO (the CEO is most highly honoured).

There are no verb conjugations in Japanese. This is a definite advantage over German!

Hindi

Hindi is another language that is widely spoken and learning to only speak and listen to it is much easier than learning how to read and write it.

If you’re motivated by watching Bollywood movies or listening to its music, you will find that Hindi is relatively easy to learn and possibly on the same level as German.

You will probably find, however, that learning to read and write Hindi is much more difficult than German.

This is because Hindi also has its own alphabet which has more vowels and consonants.

You don’t need to be put off by this, however, as the pronunciations are relatively similar to English, although learning to write and read each letter will take some time.

Hindi grammar is not difficult and is similar to German, especially as the word order for Hindi is subject, object, verb. English is subject, verb, object, and German sentences can also have verbs at the end like in Hindi or in the second position like in English.

Overall, if you are interested in learning another language, Hindi will enable you to access the language used by over a billion people, as well as movies in Bollywood, however, if learning a new alphabet is off-putting, you may find that learning German will be much easier as the first language to learn.

Greek

You may think that Greek may be relatively easy to learn, as it’s an Indo-European language after all.

Unfortunately, German will still come out as the easier language to learn for most people. Greek has its own alphabet, which means learning new letters and pronunciations. Fortunately, you probably know many of the letters already, which may help.

You will also have the benefit of regularly telling your friends about your journey learning a new language, and saying “it’s all Greek to me”.

Greek grammar will take some getting used to, like any other new language.

Although the word order is usually the same as in English, Greek also has three genders which play a part in the endings that you would attach to nouns.

Although there are some words that can be associated with Greek, some of the more common words do not have a connection, which can make it difficult for learners to grasp. If you have a background in the medical profession, you will probably find more words you understand than the non-medical person.

If you decide to learn Greek, you will be learning one of the oldest living languages in the world.

To Sum Up

Remember, at the end of the day, if you are able to piece together a rough sentence in another language, you’re successfully speaking German, even if it may not be grammatically correct!

How excited are you when you hear a non-English speaker try to put a sentence together to speak to you? Don’t forget that excitement when you’re the one trying a new language!

Remember that although grammar may seem difficult to get through, the aim of learning a language is to communicate and over time the grammar will come naturally. Don’t be intimidated by the new language, you can do this!