But declension tables are a regular part of a German primary education. The most equivalent learning issue for English speakers in the primary grades is spelling. But despite the fact that they like to stick a couple of extra consonants in words from an English perspective, German spelling is actually very easy to manage. So this may be propoganda, but it's German propoganda. Mark Twain, so hilarious: "Nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it is doing something — that is, resting which is one of the German grammar's ideas of doing something , and this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it dem Regen.
It depends what your mother tongue is. English is my second language,French is my third,and I'm using duolingo for German,tho I have looked into a book I have by myself,I will start actual classes in a few months. I can't speak for all obviously,but for me,English is very easy to learn. You are exposed to it every day,no matter where you live,you'll likely hear a song in English,see a movie,watch a video etc.. In most countries English is a second language,lessons starting at the younger age 7 or younger in my country so you really have no other option than to learn it and pick up some things.
As for the accent,it depends on how you're learning the langauge,I have more of an american accent,but I certainly don't have the ''hard r'' that is a stereotype for most of the slavic world. I can easily ''soften'' it,I will say tho that not everyone can,but a lot of them aren't even trying. Having any slavuc language is actually a great base for learning a language of another group. Now,French is a hard language in my opinion,or at least that's what I tell myself so I could sleep better at night.
I have an awful sounding ''R'' and I don't know how to speak more nasally,I just sound like a dying cat,tho my friends don't have too much of a problem,they definitely aren't fluent,but still. Complex sentences in French,at least for me,seem much harder than in English.
I should mention that it does make some difference if it's your second,third or whichever language,and,as I've said previously,your native language is a big factor in this. I can't decide yet whether it's French or German that is harder,but English is certainly easier than both. To bring this to an end,if you're a native English speaker,depending on which language you're learning,it may be harder to suddenly try and ''produce'' sounds that are much ''harder'' and more ''rolled'',I also imagine being introfuced to declination not french,but scandinavian languages,slavic languages,german,hungarian etc and nouns having genders german,slavic languages ,a possibility to exclude pronouns italian,slavic languages etc is not so easy as it is such a foreign concept.
This is too long wow. If you are talking mainly pronunciation, your mother tongue does play a major role. But you mentioned a couple of other significant factors when you were explaining why English was easy to learn that affect grammar, vocabulary and syntax ease as well. The most significant ones you mentioned are being exposed to it from an early age in many forms and certainly early formal education in that language.
There is actually a chemical in your brain that assists in language acquisition. It peaks at the age of about four and then declines steadily. This gives you a great advantage in learning any language that you are exposed to before the age of about That's how you get genuinely bilingual people, or at least that's the most common way. The first foreign I was exposed to was French, and I did begin some form of formal education before the age of ten which continued all through high school.
I have never considered American public school language education very good, although I do think it has recently become much better with the introduction of Bi-lingual education programs starting in grammar school in many cities here. But my early exposure to French, even though I never really used it beyond tourist speech, has made it easy to relearn on Duo. My accent, while certainly not great, is decent due to this early exposure.
German was my third language which I initially learned totally by immersion. My formal education came later. That is obviously the best way to learn for fluency. I was surprised to realize that I started actually thinking in German even to myself when on a walk or the like. As a speaker of a Slavic language you probably have an advantage learning German over an English native speaker. The three biggest hurdles to English speakers in learning German are the three gramatical genders, the four cases and the odd syntax, especially in dependent clauses.
I am sure I have some sort of American accent in my German, but by the time I left Germany I spoke well enough that even native speakers did not always recognize it as American. And I didn't notice American accents in others. Coming from any more complex grammar structure to English, especially within the Indo-European family, should make English fairly easy.
The biggest hurdle would be spelling in general and figuring out how to pronounce some new words you might read. But that problem is shared by MANY native speakers. Of the 6 foreign languages that I have any significant grasp of, I would say that Spanish is the easiest. That's because the spelling and pronunciation is consistent and easy to understand if not always to pronounce , the many cognates and the parallel use of the perfect tenses.
It is also the most common foreign language I have heard, both in Boston where I grew up and certainly San Diego where I have lived for the past 33 years or so. San Diego lies about 20 miles from the Mexican border at the business border crossing in the Western Hemisphere. It's usually an ironic statement, since Germans themselves don't find the German language particularly difficult.
It's used after someone makes a funny or embarrassing grammatical error. We also do the same in Hebrew and it's very common, but we take it a step forward and change the word order on purpose so it would be grammaticly incorrect, and the sentence would be more ironic.
The adjective does not agree with the noun wrong gender. Ah, so like we would say "Spelling is hard" or "English is hard" after we screw up spelling or grammar. As a german native speaker I can say, that this idiom is not only used to make fun of someone, who mad an error. It is also used, when you think about the german language. You often conclude then "Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache.
For example I have just recognized thanks duolingo , that we really write "achtzig". I thought, it was "achzig". German is a difficult language and most germans know that. At least when you ask them difficult questions Also in colloquial speech when somebody makes a common mistake. For example it is becoming increasingly common to use Dativ instead of Genitiv common: "Ich habe das wegen dir getan", correct: "Ich habe das deinetwegen getan".
Also common is mixing up "das gleiche" another which is equal and "das selbe" the very same. In those situations, it is proper for Germans to correct and mock their friends if they are also native speakers.
My GF says it all the time to me, when I'm trying to understand why something is not how I expect it. She uses it a bit like parents use "because it just is". The difficulty in languages is relative. Languages are difficult if they differ from your native language too much. For me, a Georgian, every language seemed to be very hard, because there are very few languages which are even a bit similar to my native one.
Though, any Germanic or Latin language is actually very easy, if only you crack at least one of them. I am a foreigner to both German and English, but it's even some kind of fun now to learn German because of the understanding of the similarities between French, English and German. I suggest native English speakers to take a look at old English grammar. Lots of things will get clear at once! My native language is Czech, which is quite close to Slovak language and to Russian, so it is not that hard to understand these languages.
However, it is difficult to learn these languages, because I have a problem to remember what is same and what is different - so sometimes it actually easier to learn languages which are not that much similar to your native one. I speak two romance languages reasonably well and am working on two more so I definitely understand the problem of having to remember subtle differences among them. But as a native speaker of a Slavic language you do have an advantage over many English speakers learning German despite the fact that English is a Germanic language.
The most difficult aspect of German for most English speakers is even the Concept of grammatical gender and case structure. But, if I remember correctly, Czech has three genders and seven cases, so the concepts are already there. It's the same for serbian 7 cases,3 genders and I feel like slavic languages are a great base whether you want to learn a germanic language or a romance language can't speak for the rest,as I do not speak languages outside of these three groups but it all depends.
We recognize the words we wouldn't typically use,but still know what they mean. So even tho you're not using the same ''form'' of the given word,you'll still understand each other,or at least the point.
Doing it backwards really, really helps with the motor planning, which is tough here because the sound production moves to every which place in the mouth.
And slow it down as much as you need to. They knew that these idiom lessons will give us a particularly hard time, so at least they had to teach us how to express our irritation. I think an appropriate English idiom for this would be the quote from Oscar Wilde; "Life is too short to learn German". Even as a native speaker you really have to be interested in this language to become better by the time. And nobody will be perfect at any time.
For a foreigner, perhaps. But in my experience this was said to me many times by Germans who obviously had already learned it with such a sense of pride. It seems to celebrate the lofty goal of learning it rather than avoiding it.
Am I off-base, or shouldn't that be accepted as well? I'd like to hear the opinion of someone very familiar with it- Thanks! Wirelizard What a relief. So the German idiom is right on point. I should heed my own advice and read all the posts before commenting. Thank you. I'm not "very familiar" but I am an Eng. My thought was that the idiom usually as a fixed means of expression which it has in German.
However, since it's not an idiom in English the means of expression can vary. So, I'm agreeing with you that "Speaking German is hard" should be ok. Unless, there's an objection to just "speaking" and not reading etc. But that's really being picky, no? Well the idiom in German refers to the german language in general so yes there is a lot more to it than just "speaking".
It may seem picky to you but I agree that "Speaking German is hard" does not reflect the meaning that it has in German. My tongue gets twisted up every time I try to say this sentence.
As a Hebrew speaker it's easy for me, we have a lot of similar sounds. I guess it depends on the languages you have to fall back on. As a serbian speaker,it's easy for me too,thankfully. I wish German as a whole would be like that hahah.
I think it'd be something like, "The German language is a heavy language," which, to me, seems much more eloquent and interesting than just, "German is hard Well I would certainly agree that German is hard doesn't capture the same feeling. But Deutsch Sprache, schwere Sprache is hardly eloquent.
It is pretty much German caveman speech. And, although schwere can mean heavy, I think that you are translating assuming the slang definition of heavy. I don't know if that is used at all in Germany. The only real way to simulate the feel of this sentence in German would be a direct translation.
German language, hard language. I am a native English speaker, but I must say that English can be very confusing for me. People have often told me I have a very high vocabulary too. What I mean to say though is that while English is a very simple language in that it has few rules though few are actually followed , it can be confusing as a result of its simplicity.
German has much more rigid rules. And while it may be difficult to learn those rules initially, I've found it is nice to at least have them actually mean something. I think the main difference in either one being harder to learn than the other would be that one follows rules while the other does not. Not to mention that English has a tendency to procure words from a variety of different languages. German does the same, but I would argue on a much smaller scale.
Probably because it is a lesser-spoken language globally. Just my take on the matter. I don't know. English is not that hard,at least it to me it doesn't seem like it is. Tho I guess I'm not fluent yet,as I'd assume you'd describe your vocabulary as ''rich'' or ''wide'' rather than high?
It just caught me off guard. Or maybe I just have that feeling because in my language we'd say ''wide'' or maybe ''broadened'' literal translations ofc ,which compared to what you've used seem like two different ''dimensions'' or better yet measurements. Could you tell me what else would be an example of the same way of using this,just for the future reference so I won't get it mixed up? Thanks in advance. Yes it is I just arrived back in the US after spending a month in Germany on an exchange trip and I heard it more than once by native German speakers my favorite was when my host sister commented to her grandmother that English is hard the grandmother responded back Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache and English is also difficult or something like that, and all in German This really is a thing.
I work 5 different courses actively on Duo. They all occasionally over repeat sentences in an exercise, but none more often then German. On the other hand, the German course has almost twice the number of units in their tree as the Spanish.
I suspect they had to work so hard to break it out into units that they didn't provide enough sentences for each lesson. Spanish has plenty of sentences in each unit, but I can think of a few units it should add. Difficulty is relative. English has unfathomable spelling, with bought, taught, short, tough, bough, laugh and women; German has infinite numbers withoutpausingforspaceorbreathuntiltheendoftime; Chinese has tones, where a horse can be a question; and Irish has declarative verbs in initial position, prepositional pronouns - and consonant clusters that look like alphabet soup.
Or even at the beginning of words - i bhfad for a long time. Literally speaking it is probably not an idioms. True idioms are expressions whose true meanings are not really related to the cumulative meaning of the individual words. Literally it means to leave the church in the village, but it is used to tell someone not to get carried away Throw the baby out with the bath water? But idioms become formula like cultural truism which are repeated over and over again in the same way.
I guess a better thing would be to just call it a saying. But the first year I spent in Germany I must have heard this times repeated to me by many people. It is a common German saying. This sentence has a negative connotation towards non German speakers, since it mimics poor grammar.
This is not supposed to convey any feeling toward foreigners at all, nor was it intended to be a sentence. It is simply pithy cultural wisdom put in the simplest terms possible. Well just don't tell the Germans. When I lived in Germany, people would say this to be, supposedly in sympathy to my errors, but with such obvious pride. Actually that would be Deutsch ist schwer. The terminal e is there because the adjective precedes the noun.
Normally that would be a good translation, but this is an idiom, a set proverbial expression in a particular culture, so you memorize it. Native German speakers say this a lot to people learning German. It is a strange mixture of pride and comisoration.
Deutsche is the adjectival form. You need the noun Deutsch. And, of course, Sprache is feminine. So the correct sentence is Deutsch ist eine schwere Sprache. But this sentence is almost a slogan.
You will hear this said just like this all over. Absolutely, and a common one, at least it was. I doubt it has changed. Many Germans seem quite proud of the difficulties in German. I had had no previous education, formal or informal, in German.
I learned by immersion. I lived on a farm and only worked 4 hours a day. I spent hours on the stammtisch of the Gasthaus in the local village of Prutting absorbing German through my pores so to speak. I can't tell you how many times I heard this when I struggled a bit to communicate early on. I don't know what you mean by "proper".
As I was learning, I heard this exact saying maybe times. But "german" what? Car, woman, problem In contrast to English, in German "German" does not mean necessarily language if not followed by a noun. If you read through the posts on this page you'll see one that says that ""Deutsche Sprache" means the German language.
Even easier hover over the words "Deutsche Sprache" above it says: "German" "language". So, yes it is necessarily the language. Look at this post with Hints and tips and very good Guidelines which everyone should have bookmarked. It will make learning easier. Well that's not really idiomatic at all, while deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache is. The translation given, German is hard is pretty dry, but it's hard to translate properly in the first place.
It is not idiomatic in the same sense as "hit the books" certainly. If you translate it word for word its meaning is clear. German language, difficult language. But since this is a very common expression which is said in this non-standard way without a verb, it is considered an idiom. I've been asked this same question about ten times in the same test, interleaved with "Ende gut, alles gut.
For some reason the German course does it more than the others. It has more levels on the tree than many others, but seems to have fewer questions allowed in each lesson. English is easy.. I am curious as to when and how you learned Russian. But most of this is made easier if you have learned the language when you were young or in an immersion situation. I learned German in Germany, although I hadn't spoken it for many years and I am relearning a lot.
But it does come back easier. Of the languages I speak or dabble in, Spanish is the easiest. It has a totally consistent spelling and pronunciation and a large number of true cognates. But all languages have their own challenges. You can use more than just Duolingo to learn a language. Go and find a textbook somewhere.
The internet is a gold mine of information, and there is certainly enough to learn Icelandic. Also, why are you claiming that Icelandic is a "native language" of yours? I know you personally, and you talk all the time to people about how your family once ruled over Ireland. In the terms of very very broad ancestry, yeah, Icelandic is related, but it most certainly is not a "native language" of yours. But, there is multitude of information on the internet, so if ypu really wanted to, you could learn Icelandic.
Here's a link to a free Icelandic course. There are quite a few resources online as was mentioned, although many are not free. The series of language courses generally has both free and paid sections, but I didn't check this one that deeply.
As for Duo introducing it, you never know, but I wouldn't hold my breath. With over languages out there, it's hard to anticipate what will get touched and what won't. But one thing that is required is native speakers designing the program. Some of smaller languages on Duo have no audio component. I assume that's because they don't have native speakers to record them.
I suspect if Icelandic were offered it might be one of those. With only about half a million speakers in the world, they would not likely get a speaker on staff. And by the way you never learn a native language as an adult.
A native language is one that is heard from earliest memory. It is generally your first language, although rarely someone exists in a truly bilingual environment and can be said to have two native languages. I don't find the German language hard, I read about the grammar, it goes over my head, and I keep learning new phrases. If I don't get the exact word correct, I'm sure I'll be understood.
Not being able to see the literal transations of some of the individual words inhibits learning in this lesson. Maybe it is different on a desktop, but on mobile Android I cannot see each word's translation when I tap the word. The dropdown display that comes up is not properly formatted to display all of the information that is in that dropdown. This comment is better given under the flag icon. The Android program has been revamped and there may be bugs, but that's a Duo issue, we are just users here.
I would recommend you forgo the hints in favor of a good online dictionary or dictionary Android App. My favorite for most of my languages in Word Refernce Spanishdict is better for Spanish, but Word Reference works great for my other languages. The hints are simplistic at best and often confusing because they can contain meanings that do not relate to the current usage. If I have a real question I find that leaving the exercise and doing the research and coming back to complete the answer is the most effective tool in actually fixing the information in my brain.
Somehow I feel like I'm cheating when I do that, but I actually think I would be cheating myself if I didn't use the most effective learning method for me. Because the English is not actually a direct translation of the German. Literally the German say "German Language, difficult language. It is sort of a Yoda-like expression that you will hear when people struggle with some of the grammar issues of German.
Bad english. It should say Speaking German is easier than learning it. Hiwever a direct translation would be German language is hard.
Actually the direct translation is the caveman style German language, hard language, but the "gist" is German is hard. If you were translating the other way it would be. But this is an idiom. Probably 20 people said this to me exactly like this when I lived in Germany. No -- if you wanted to say "German is difficult", it would be Deutsch ist schwer , with no -e endings. Given my humble experience, I think that someone who speaks English can simply learn German and vis versa..
Plus a little bit of French maybe. English is a Germanic language where the transition between Old and Middle English was effected by the fact French was spoken by the upper classes and government in England for about years after the Norman invasion of England in makes those languages somewhat familiar. But English has been almost devoid of a case system for a long time and is currently losing much of what it had.
Few English speakers under the age of forty and I am probably being generous even understand that Whom did you see at the party and answering It's I instead of it's me would be the "correct" response at least quite recently are ill-prepared for a language with three genders and inconsistent plurals which are all affected by which of the four cases they are in. So while learning to read or hear German may be easy, speaking it correctly is definitely challenging especially when you add in the unusual syntax.
As for French you have many words that are spelled exactly the same, but when you have a language where il porte and ils portent sound EXACTLY the same, you certainly can't say that anyone would find that easy. The ability to learn languages easily rests with the individual person I would say, rather than the language, and is especially affected by how young you were when you first really learned a second language.
I speak several languages with a reasonable degree of fluency, and can see things about each which make them both difficult and easy to learn. I would probably say Spanish is the easiest because it is written exactly as it is spoken when you understand the rules, and as a Romance language it also has many cognates but mostly without the issue of double letters.
It also uses the perfect tenses very much like English, including using only one auxiliary verb for them, and has progressive tenses , although used much less frequently. On the other hand it uses the subjunctive more obviously and consistently like other Romance languages, has two verbs that are translated with to be, routinely both omits subject pronouns and allows the subject to come after the verb in declaratory sentences and uses the personal a which makes no sense in any language I know.
There are easy aspects and difficult aspects to all languages, but to the extent you stay within the Indo-European family you will find some consistency. And of course everyone steals tech terms and the like from English. Most often because those discussions attracted a lot more off-topic comments than on-topic comments. For example, when people chat with each other or talk about the sentence or post memes or make jokes.
Note: talking about the grammar or vocabulary of a sentence is fine. Talking about the contents of the sentence is off-topic here. When I lived in Germany so many people said this to me just this way. But it would also sound strange in German were it not such a common expression.
If you didn't use the idiom, it would have to be Deutsch ist schwer , without the -e at the ends of the words. I don't speak a word of Hungarian, but I think that it's a safe bet that many people would agree with you. Hungarian has different challenges than German, not struggling with grammatical gender or as many cases. But Hungarian is not an Indo-European language, one of the very few that have survived in Europe. Popularity rank by frequency of use Sprache Select another language:.
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