Is it hard to learn German if you speak English?

For many English speakers, German is a difficult language to pick up. Its long words, four noun case endings, and rough pronunciation gives your tongue quite the workout each time you speak. German is recognized as a very descriptive language.

Is English influenced by German?

English has its roots in the Germanic languages, from which German and Dutch also developed, as well as having many influences from romance languages such as French.

Can an English person learn German?

In short, the FSI estimated that learning German will take approximately 30 weeks (750 hours) for English speakers. This may seem like a lot of time, but it’s a fraction compared to languages like Chinese, Japanese and Arabic, which took students up to 88 weeks to learn.

Is English more Romance or Germanic?

So, when it comes down to it, English is a Germanic language, however it has been heavily influenced by the Romance languages over the years. Some even adhere to the Middle English Creole Hypothesis wherein English underwent a simplification between Old English and Middle English.

Is French or German closer to English?

French is closer to English than it is to German. That’s mainly a matter of vocabulary, since English has taken a larger amount of words from French than German has, especially the Anglo-Norman French vocabulary that came in after the Norman Conquest of 1066.

Is German easy for English?

German might not be as familiar to English speakers as Spanish, but it’s still one of the easiest languages to learn.

Why is German so hard to learn?

One of the main reasons German isn’t all that hard to learn is that German and English originate from the same language families and share more similarities than you probably realise. Both German and English are Indo-European languages that stem from the Germanic family of languages.

What are the negative effects of learning a foreign language?

There are one or two negative effects for those learning a foreign language. One of the negatives has more of an effect on adults than it does with children, and that is the amount of time it takes to learn a language once your cognitive and reasoning skills are well-established.

Is learning a second language worth the effort?

But many speakers of foreign languages extolled the benefits. Four native English speakers tell the BBC how making the effort to learn a second language is important – and how it changed their life. When Alex Chaffer moved to Germany four years ago, he could only say “hello” and “thank you” in German.

Is German grammar difficult?

German grammar – and the cases, in particular – has a reputation for being mindbendingly difficult. But in reality, it’s not that German grammar is terribly hard, it’s just unfamiliar and strange to us because it differs from English. Allow me to explain…