Is it easy to learn German compared to French and Spanish

[Triton4]

For one who speaks only English?

Is it practical to learn German (i.e. will it be of help in the current world)?

[Nico1980]

I guess spanish is easier than German...

[NJK]

Originally posted by Nico1980
I guess spanish is easier than German...

depends on your native language

since i speak frisian for me German is far easier to learn than spanish
German and Frisian are close related languages.

[Nico1980]

Frisian? Im curios... where does people speack Frisian? I never heard about it (my ignorance, i know) but sound interesting to learn something new today. If you are so kind and explain me about Frisian. Thanks.

[NJK]

https://www.google.com

keyword frysian or fryslan

enough info to keep you busy for some time

[Nico1980]

Originally posted by spaceplay
www.google.com
keyword frysian or fryslan

enough info to keep you busy for some time

Google said:

Did you mean: friesian



Neederland?

------

Ok, found something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friesland

"As milk is to cheese, are English and Frise."

"Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries", which in English reads: "Butter, bread and green cheese, whoever can't say that is no real Frise".

[Koopa]

Learning German is hard, because our languages is complicated. But it was much easier for me to learn English then French. I have problems to talk french and french is very hard to learn at least for German people.

So I agree, it depends on your native language, if it's hard or not.

[Nico1980]

Originally posted by Koopatrooper
Learning German is hard, because our languages is complicated. But it was much easier for me to learn English then French. I have problems to talk french and french is very hard to learn at least for German people.

So I agree, it depends on your native language, if it's hard or not.

Agree, i speak spanish and for me French, Italisn and Portuguese are much easier than german

[imike24]

yes I agreed. I tried learning German but it was just not easy as I have thought. I had master numerous language for years but I met my match with German. Anyway it will require some time to master it but perseverance will pay off. I will keep trying.

__________________
*******y philadelphia *******y seattle *******y washingtondc *******y st louis

[Nico1980]

German is parented with english and spanichs is parented with Italian, French, portugues, Latin, etc.

[steep5]

I do not mean to sound like a snob, but I thought I would point out the (apparently not so) obvious; English is a Germanic language. That explains the numerous amount of cognitives between the languages–including the word "Kognativ".

In my opinion, German should be the easiest language for a native English speaker to learn.

In the USA, it makes more sense to learn Spanish. Don't count German out, however; if you wish to go into international business, German is still a very useful language!

[Fuchur84]

German - Easier than French or Spanish?

In my opinion, German should be the easiest language for a native English speaker to learn.

It depends. The biggest problem people have with German are the cases. we got "only" 4 of them (there are other languages which have 16... I think finnish is one of them).
In English there is no such thing. That is why English is considered by other Western countries as a more or less easy language.

Cases depend on the sentence itself and the position of the word in the sentence.
In the end, most people will understand what you are after anyway even so you dont get the right case. (It is not like that we would always be right with this neighter ).

As in French or Spanish we use different female and male articles (that means we dont have one word like "the" but we use three different once for male, female and words which describe an "it"). That is the reason why sometimes you will read something like "The apple who is..." and not "The apple which is...". An apple ("Der Apfel") is a "male-word" in German. The Sun ("die Sonne") is a "female-word". The car ("das Auto") is the "it"-word.

A thing that is a bit different to other languages is, that German is "case-sensitive" if you write it. All nouns are written in Uppercase (better to say the first letter of it is written in uppercase -> "Apfel"). In English and many other languages this is only the case if you write a name. "Susi eats an apple" = "Susi ist einen Apfel."

So I would say that German is slightly (not very much) more difficult to learn than Spanish. (I cant speak French so I cant say much about it, but it is considered to be as difficult as Spanish so I assume that for now.)

In Europe it is the most spoken language (mothertongue-wise). That is because it is spoken in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as mothertongue-language.
You will find the language itself on the whole planet, but here is a map of where it is spoken in Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Knowledge_German_EU_map.png

In Europe it is mainly important because Germany is one of or the most important economic country here.

German is although known in the USA, because the German pilgrins in the USA are based in Philadelphia and as that, you can find most of the german-speaking people in the area around Philadelphia.

"Is German more important than Spanish of French"? I would say no. It is important because of the economic power of Germany, but more people talk spanish or french all over the planet than German.
However Spanish is spoken in many areas which are not that powerful in a economic way. (Some countries in South-America, Spain, etc.)
However French is often spoken in although economical powerful countries like Japan because it is considered as a very "beautiful" language.

Someone told you to learn Chinese. It is true that it will become more and more important but it is although true that it is totally different from languages in the western world because of different letters, a whole other pronounciation and the fact that there is not "one" Chinese-language.

The one which is spoken by most people is "Mandarin".
But it can happen to you that you are in a part of China, where they just dont speak it.
For example in Germany there are different dialects but everybody will understand what you are saying if you speak German to them. In China there are really different languages which are spoken, not only different dialects.

I would recommend to learn one of the other western languages (like German, Spanish or French) and not to try to learn a eastern lanuage like Chinese. This is just to difficult and you will very fast hit a point where you lost all your motivation.
On the other hand: IF you can speak an eastern an a western language, you are more unique.
It is your choice.

Many more informations can be found on wikipedia.

*Fuchur*LINK TO IMAGE

[_bullet_time_99]

For me Spanish and French are far more easy to learn than German. I know a bit of all these languages and German seems the hardest. I think that only Chinese is harder...

[VIPer]

Russian is probably one of the harder European languages.

[Menschenfleisch]

Re: German - Easier than French or Spanish?

Originally posted by Fuchur84
"Susi eats an apple" = "Susi ist einen Apfel.

It means "Susi isst einen Apfel." Because "ist" would mean "is" not "eat"

We germans also have the letters ä, ö, ü and ß

And I agree with Koopatrooper 100%

French is also for me very very hard to learn ...

and english the easiest