Don't Learn German

[Forward Union]

Not mine, but to those of you thinking of learning german please consider this


Living in Germany is great, and I would recommend it to anyone. Speaking German, on the other hand, is terrible and it should be avoided at all costs. In fact, Mark Twain warned us way back in 1880 in his essay The Awful German Language not to bother with this language. There are countless reasons not to learn German, so let’s discuss a few:

The German language is, in fact, impossible to learn unless you begin learning it as a baby. Starting to learn this language is impossible if you start later, because your brain will lack the capacity to learn so many senseless details, such as the different forms of the word “the”.

You probably know in German there are three different genders der, das, and die. So for every single noun out there, you need to memorize a gender as well (the are some rules for determining gender, but for every rule there are just as many exceptions as examples that fit, so you still have to memorize every single one individually). But you also need to change the article, based on the case that you are using the noun in. Let’s see what this looks like in German

German Nominative der das die die (pl.)
Accusative den das die die
Dative dem dem der den
Genitive des des der der

English Nominative the the the the (pl.)
Accusative the the the the
Dative the the the the
Genitive the the the the

Do you really want to learn a language that has 16 ways to say the word “the”? And it doesn’t stop there, you need to learn 16 ways to say “a” (in English 2), and 32 ways to change adjective endings (in English we have 0). And you want to try to do this in real-time in your head while trying to carry one a conversation… forget about it.

In English, when something is plural we just add “s” to the end. In German you add an “s”, an “e”, a couple of dots somewhere in the middle, an “er”, an “en”, or just do nothing at all and the word becomes plural. Also be careful what case you are talking in, because that changes the plural form again, should you use the dative case.

For every verb you learn, you must learn to conjugate it for I, you, You, they, he, she, it, and ya’ll. You’ll also need to learn them in present tense, past tense, perfect past tense, and subjunctive. Oh, and having one subjunctive case isn’t good enough for Germans. Germans need two subjunctive cases, because they deem it necessary to designate hearsay grammatically.You will never learn all this, so don’t bother trying.

No matter how good your German gets, most Germans will speak English much better than you can speak German. Let them do the work in learning your language, since they have to do it anyway to talk with the rest of the world. The British have figured out you can live in Germany with no problems without speaking a word of German, so just follow their lead.

Use your lack of German speaking abilities to your advantage in the workforce. For every professional job in Germany, English is a required skill. So by default, any professional working in Germany who doesn’t speak English fluently either lied to get the job and/or is incompetent. Forcing these people to speak in English gives you an unfair edge in order to dominate negotiations. Try negotiating in German and you have the exact opposite situation… don’t set yourself up for a weaker position by learning enough German to get you into trouble.

It makes business meetings more entertaining, because when you show up to the meeting and say you can’t speak German, the meeting has to be conducted in English to accommodate you. This will slow down the pace of the meeting considerably, because you are forcing the majority of the people to speak a foreign language, but Germans love to discuss things so much, that they will take up all the allotted time for the meeting either way. You might as well do this to make it more fun, because it’s really entertaining to watch people who agree with each other fight each other. Since the Germans in the meeting will be so busy trying to figure out how to say what they want to say next in English, they won’t have any chance to pay attention to what the other person is saying, so a heated argument will always ensue, even when the participants completely agree with each other. Sit back, drink some excellent European coffee, eat some Keks and enjoy, cause you wouldn’t be going home soon anyway.

You will never learn how to say ö or ü.

Germans will change their spelling system as soon as you learn it. By the time you learn the difference between das and daß, daß doesn’t exist anymore, and in its place you have words like Schifffffahrt.

Tokio Hotel records English versions of their songs, so you have that angle covered as well.

[Widerstand]

Fucking Anti-German propaganda.

[Forward Union]

To be honest you can't really argue with the Tokio Hotel point.

[mykittyhasaboner]

WEll that's discouraging, but I don't think it's much to take into consideration. Learning a completely new language is always going to have some kind of nuances.

I find it a bit chavunistic to suggest that people should live in German speaking areas and purposely speak English for the sake of having an "advantage in negotiation".

[Widerstand]

I find it a bit chauvunistic to suggest that people should live in German speaking areas and purposely speak English for the sake of having an "advantage in negotiation".

You have never heard the average German speak English then. Don't be sad, it's better that way for your own mental health.

[Sasha]

i found german an quite easy language to learn when i was in highschool, at least a shit load better than french

[Tablo]

That article is dumb. I took 2 years of German and that stuff was easy as long as you studied. Spanish makes German look really easy in my opinion.

[Forward Union]

i found german an quite easy language to learn when i was in highschool, at least a shit load better than french

Thats because you already speak Dutch...

[Sasha]

:D

[Forward Union]

That article is dumb. I took 2 years of German and that stuff was easy as long as you studied. Spanish makes German look really easy in my opinion.

Never heard that before. According to the UK Government, Spanish is supposed to take 1500 hours of study, while German is supposed to take 4000. According to the FBIs intensive language course, spanish takes up to 20 weeks (in enrolment) while German takes up to 36 (Chinese is 44).

According to every language ranking i've ever seen, Spanish, along with Swedish, Norwegian and Frisian are listed as the most similar to English, while German is either in band 2, band 3 (with Russian) Example here (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers) or "other" because, due to the amount of inflection in the language despite being "Germanic" it is conisdered to be part of another Language tradition than English Source (http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty)

As a Spanish speaker, I was pleased to see that it had almost no gramatical imperfections, 40+% similar vocab, no inflection, and two genders that could always be determined by whether the noun ended in an a or an o.


Also, another funny article worth reading


Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions." He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. Such has been, and continues to be, my experience. Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing "cases" where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird -- (it is always inquiring after things which are of no sort of consequence to anybody): "Where is the bird?" Now the answer to this question -- according to the book -- is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would do that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for that answer.

I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea. I say to myself, "Regen (rain) is masculine -- or maybe it is feminine -- or possibly neuter -- it is too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is either der (the) Regen, or die (the) Regen, or das (the) Regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine. Very well -- then the rain is der Regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without enlargement or discussion -- 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. However, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively, -- it is falling -- to interfere with the bird, likely -- and this indicates movement, which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing dem Regen into den Regen." Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) den Regen." Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the Genitive case, regardless of consequences -- and that therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen des Regens." The Awful German Language
(http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html)

[mykittyhasaboner]

You have never heard the average German speak English then. Don't be sad, it's better that way for your own mental health.

What does that mean? That I can't learn german just because its considered by some people to be complicated?

I have heard many average germans speak english, they all speak it. that's all i could use when went to germany. I could learn to speak German if I tried, it's not that hard.

[Honggweilo]

Thats because you already speak Dutch...

so what? dutch is much more similar to english in terms of grammar and doesnt have all the explicit grammatical cases like german does (something alot of germans dont even use in daily language). My german is reasonable and i can make myself quite understandable, even without using the 16 forms of the word "the" (which is the reason i was shitty at german in highschool).

[Forward Union]

so what? dutch is much more similar to english in terms of grammar and doesnt have all the explicit grammatical cases like german does (something alot of germans dont even use in daily language). My german is reasonable and i can make myself quite understandable, even without using the 16 forms of the word "the" (which is the reason i was shitty at german in highschool).


Dutch is grammatically (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_grammar) similar to German (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_grammar), Wikipedia.

Dutch is an Inflected case language, English isnt. English is part of the Anglo-Frisian Germanic wing, which has more similarities with North Germanic. And by coincidence, Spanish and Catalan. Now, while Dutch did not undergo the High German Consonant Shift, it did maintain the former, making German an easy stepping stone for a Dutch speaker.

Dutch Case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language#Genders_and_cases)

The equivilant might be Learning Scots as an English speaker.

[Quail]

I think it depends on the person. I found German fairly difficult to learn (and I lived there for 3 years), but I find French quite easy. Some people are the opposite.

[Il Medico]

It seems to say things that could apply to most languages besides English (like word gender, yeah, most languages, at least European ones, to my knowledge have this). Saying it is impossible to learn German is like saying it is impossible to learn any foreign language, which is rubbish.

[Die Rote Fahne]

English is the hardest language to learn as an adult.

[Il Medico]

Oh, I would also like to note that when I tried my hand with German I found it extremely hard, despite it's similarity to English. imo, Latin based languages are easier to learn. (I didn't have a problem with Spanish when I studied it or French now, though I am hardly fluent in either.)

[Forward Union]

It seems to say things that could apply to most languages besides English (like word gender, yeah, most languages, at least European ones, to my knowledge have this). Saying it is impossible to learn German is like saying it is impossible to learn any foreign language, which is rubbish.

But, in Spanish, Gender is like this. If it ends in an O it's mascuine (el), if it ends in an A it's femanine (la). There. You've learnt that now, took a few moments, try these. ...Cerveca ...Cinema ...Perro. With German

"In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not -- which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish is he, his scales are she, but a fishwife is neither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description; that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. A German speaks of an Englishman as the Engländer; to change the sex, he adds inn, and that stands for Englishwoman -- Engländerinn. That seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the word with that article which indicates that the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die Engländerinn," -- which means "the she-Englishwoman." I consider that that person is over-described." Mark twain.

I think the problem here is that you are assuming a kind of Neutrality between languages. As if they consist of nothing more than variying vocab. That is not true, they consist of different construction technigues, such as varying levels of inflection, declination, case, gender, mutation. Most of which are not even in the English language.

Remember, these are not value judgements no one is suggesting a language is measurably better than another one. But there are languages that are simply very, very difficult, and others which are quite easy. But it's somewhat relative. So, Estonian is much easier for a Finnish speaking person to learn than an English speaker etc.

[Forward Union]

English is the hardest language to learn as an adult.

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:Unx2YBWG6DbYrM:http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/174/trollface.png&t=1

[Forward Union]

like word gender, yeah, most languages, at least European ones, to my knowledge have this

For a laugh, a literal translation of a German story :lol:

"It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail, how he rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along, and of the Mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife, it is stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped its Basket of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scales as it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale has even got into its Eye, and it cannot get her out. It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the Storm. And now a Tomcat has got one of the Fishes and she will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a Fin, she holds her in her Mouth -- will she swallow her? No, the Fishwife's brave Mother-dog deserts his Puppies..."

[Tablo]

I honestly didn't find German that hard. Then again, it was a couple years ago I studied it and I can't remember much of it any more.

[Il Medico]

But, in Spanish, Gender is like this. If it ends in an O it's mascuine (el), if it ends in an A it's femanine (la). There. You've learnt that now, took a few moments, try these. ...Cerveca ...Cinema ...Perro. With German

"In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not -- which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish is he, his scales are she, but a fishwife is neither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description; that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. A German speaks of an Englishman as the Engländer; to change the sex, he adds inn, and that stands for Englishwoman -- Engländerinn. That seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the word with that article which indicates that the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die Engländerinn," -- which means "the she-Englishwoman." I consider that that person is over-described." Mark twain.

That's all very well and good, but that doesn't make the language impossible.

French is more difficult than Spanish in a way because it is a closed vowel language. (you often can't hear the difference between singular and Plural.) But that hardly makes it impossible to learn. Same applies to German. Just because something is hard doesn't mean you can't learn it.


I think the problem here is that you are assuming a kind of Neutrality between languages. As if they consist of nothing more than variying vocab. That is not true, they consist of different construction technigues, such as varying levels of inflection, declination, case, gender, mutation. Most of which are not even in the English language.I'm not. One of the most difficult things about learning a language is learning to think in that language. An Anglo-phonic person who wants to speak French, for example, has to learn to think like a Franco-phone. When speaking French (or any foreign language), you can't take it from an Anglo-phonic perspective. You have to learn a whole new way to look at language. So I don't see how it matters if a language has stuff that English doesn't, you shouldn't be trying to understand it through the lens of English. If you do, then you will fail, and it is indeed impossible to learn.


Remember, these are not value judgements no one is suggesting a language is measurably better than another one. But there are languages that are simply very, very difficult, and others which are quite easy. But it's somewhat relative. So, Estonian is much easier for a Finnish speaking person to learn than an English speaker etc.Well yes, of course. I think a Chinese speaker might have an easier time learning Japanese than a Spaniard. The languages are closer.

[Forward Union]

I honestly didn't find German that hard. Then again, it was a couple years ago I studied it and I can't remember much of it any more.

I (self) studied it for... 4 months. And attempted some reading and convo, and was told it was all completely wrong because of a thousand complicated grammer rules, tried again, same, and again, same. Got too frustraited...

I can hold basic conversations in German, "hi, how are you, im fine, where do you live now?" etc, because repeating German phrases and memorising them isn't too hard for an english speaker. But trying to go 'off the beaten track' and start talking or reading german with some lucidity becomes quickly impossible. And learning German beyond anything basic became mind numbingly hard, a process of constant let downs and backtracking.

[Jazzhands]

Actually, German doesn't look that hard to figure out. and I know how umlauts work. That's actually one of the easiest parts.

You wanna know what the worst langage to learn really is? Albanian. The way they spell things makes absolutely no sense. Plus there is no legitimate reason to go to Albania.:D

[Widerstand]

What does that mean? That I can't learn german just because its considered by some people to be complicated?

I have heard many average germans speak english, they all speak it. that's all i could use when went to germany. I could learn to speak German if I tried, it's not that hard.

I means that a lot of Germans speak terrible English, to the point where I don't have a clue what they're saying. I'm not saying German is difficult to learn to communicate, but properly speaking it is a different thing altogether. I don't consider my German to be grammatically correct either.


so what? dutch is much more similar to english in terms of grammar and doesnt have all the explicit grammatical cases like german does (something alot of germans dont even use in daily language). My german is reasonable and i can make myself quite understandable, even without using the 16 forms of the word "the" (which is the reason i was shitty at german in highschool).

I can understand most written Dutch, and I never studied it. I guess most Dutch native speakers can understand written German too. The words and grammar are somewhat similar.

[Invincible Summer]

It looks intimidating, but it's not actually too difficult. I found it one of the easier languages I've learned. Spanish was the easiest, although I dont' remember most of it.

Mandarin Chinese is probably one of the hardest for those unaccustomed to character-based languages.

[Adi Shankara]

Thats because you already speak Dutch...

I speak Russian at a native level, and considering pronounciation, syntax, and conjugation, I'm quite positive Russia is 10x harder than German is...in fact, according to the US Department of Defense, Russian is one of five languages (along with Korean, Japanese, Arabic, and Mandarin) that takes at least a year to read a newspaper in...

...yet hundreds of thousands of people learn Russian every year. it's spoken as a second language fluently by millions in the Warsaw Pact countries, and many millions more in Central Asia: (especially Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Kyrgyzstan) In fact, only 40 million more native speakers than non-native speakers can speak it!

in fact, just pronounce this, the way to say "I love you" in Russian:

Ya Lyublyu Tebya

or try to say this common Russian tongue twister, which even I have difficulty saying:

Promenyala Paraskovya karasya
Na tri pary chernoburykh porosyat.
Pobezhali porosyata po rose,
Prostudilis' porosyata, da ne vse.

(basically saying, I had some carp, sold them for three piglets, the pigs caught a cold while running through the dew, but that's not the only thing they got)

Now imagine saying it fast! trust me, it doesn't get harder than Russian, or probably Korean.

[Adi Shankara]

I think a Chinese speaker might have an easier time learning Japanese than a Spaniard. The languages are closer.

Except for the writing system (and even then, Chinese has no abugida like Japanese does), they're not even remotely close; Japanese is a language isolate (except for some theories placing it close to Korean) in a language family with only Ryukyuan, while Chinese is a member of Sino-Tibetan family of languages (along with Thai, Burmese, Hmong, and Tibetan) has a very different syntax, is a tonal language, and a much more simple grammatical structure than Japanese, which is itself an agglutinative language; just because they're both in East Asia, doesn't mean they're actually closely related.

[Rusty Shackleford]

dude, i love german. its not that hard. the author probably took 3 years of german and never studied. yeah der die das and all that are difficult but with practice you learn them.

speaking english helps a lot too. since, you know, its an anglo-saxon language. yeah, im not that good at it, but whats better? trying or saying "thats hard"?

bringing about revolution is hard, but its something that we want to do. its obviously a different case because revolution is a necessity but its a good example. you will never know how to do it right but at least you can do it.

[Quail]

To be fair, I don understand a hell of a lot more German than I speak. I think it's a lot easier to understand than it is to speak/construct sentences.

[Il Medico]

Except for the writing system (and even then, Chinese has no abugida like Japanese does), they're not even remotely close; Japanese is a language isolate (except for some theories placing it close to Korean) in a language family with only Ryukyuan, while Chinese is a member of Sino-Tibetan family of languages (along with Thai, Burmese, Hmong, and Tibetan) has a very different syntax, is a tonal language, and a much more simple grammatical structure than Japanese, which is itself an agglutinative language; That's interesting. Didn't know that. Thanks mate.

just because they're both in East Asia, doesn't mean they're actually closely related.
They are still probably more closely related with one another than a Latin based language. That was all I was saying. :lol: Didn't mean to imply they were the same.

[Devrim]

Oh dear, English people going on about German. What happened? Did they get up early in the morning and steal all the deck chairs?

Devrim

[Adi Shankara]

Oh dear, English people going on about German. What happened? Did they get up early in the morning and steal all the deck chairs?

Devrim

since you're from Turkey, you made me think: Turkish is another ridiculously hard language (to me, at least)

[Wanted Man]

As a Dutch speaker, I didn't find German that easy. I'm quite glad I don't have to study it any more. I somehow have the idea that Spanish would be easier to learn.


Oh dear, English people going on about German. What happened? Did they get up early in the morning and steal all the deck chairs?

Devrim

Actually, they always get up early in the morning to steal all the good spots on the beach by digging ditches for themselves.

[Quail]

Actually, they always get up early in the morning to steal all the good spots on the beach by digging ditches for themselves.

That's Germans!
Or so I have found lol.

[NecroCommie]

It's not that german is hard, but english is easy. Really, german is really logical language when compared to some others.

[Devrim]

since you're from Turkey, you made me think: Turkish is another ridiculously hard language (to me, at least)

I am not originally from Turkey, I still make mistakes and speak with an accent.

Turkish has over two million verb endings, but is an amazingly logical language, which is hardly surprising as it was constructed in the 1920s. There is only one irregular word in the entire language. Also there are no articles or genders.

Devrim

[Wanted Man]

That's Germans!
Or so I have found lol.

Yeah, that's what I said. Funny how these things are common knowledge to all of us. They must be true. ;)

Actually, most Germans are pretty nice. I live about 1 hour away from the border, and thousands of Germans come to study at my university. They make a serious effort at learning Dutch, and they become proficient very quickly. Certainly better than the other way around, although I don't know any Dutch people who study in Germany. Perhaps the ones that do also speak better German.

Oh, and on sunny weekend days, we also get loads of German tourists going for a nice city trip. :)

[synthesis]

I actually found Turkish to be one of the easiest to pick up, but it might be because I had also learned some of the basics of Hungarian and Arabic before that.

[Adi Shankara]

It's not that German is hard, but English is easy. Really, German is really logical language when compared to some others.

ha really? everyone I ever talked to who has immigrated here has said that learning English is one of the hardest languages to learn because of the lack of logical grammar, and the pronunciation of words that follow no pattern. I mean your experience is different, but I just always hear that it's a really hard language to learn.

[Quail]

Yeah, that's what I said. Funny how these things are common knowledge to all of us. They must be true. ;)

Actually, most Germans are pretty nice. I live about 1 hour away from the border, and thousands of Germans come to study at my university. They make a serious effort at learning Dutch, and they become proficient very quickly. Certainly better than the other way around, although I don't know any Dutch people who study in Germany. Perhaps the ones that do also speak better German.

Oh, and on sunny weekend days, we also get loads of German tourists going for a nice city trip. :)

When I lived in Berlin, I met shop assistants who were like, "Get out of my shop!"!

[NecroCommie]

Yes, but you must remember that it was kayl that was entering their shop. :D

[Quail]

Thanks :p

[Forward Union]

Now imagine saying it fast! trust me, it doesn't get harder than Russian, or probably Korean.

Russian is normally listed as a catagory 3 language in terms of difficulty for a native English speaker (German being a 2) though the study time is not so different, and Russian has a lot less exceptions.

But no doubt, Russian is a very hard language to learn. One comment I remember reading about Russian however, is that it can be quite a positive experience to learn it, as the Alphabet can be picked up in a couple of days (I can read the Russian alphabet, after about that much study) then quite a few familer words pop up, and study comences on a positive note. Other languages, Finnish, Hungarian, German, often start with an assumption of ease, and students find (unlike languages that start easy and get hard) that they hit a rather large learnign curve very early on. I'm not sure how much truth there is to this though.

As for Turkish, having had a little look at it, it doesn't seem too rediculous. I wasn't aware that it was quite as streamlined as you made it out to be. Is the same true of Crimean Tatar and Gaugaz? (if that's spelt right)

[Forward Union]

ha really? everyone I ever talked to who has immigrated here has said that learning English is one of the hardest languages to learn because of the lack of logical grammar

Actually, English hardly has any noticable grammer. We have only one article for anything, in any situation at any time. No formal or informal language. No Gender. No inflection. No Case. No adjective endings. No mutations.

Infact, you can reshuffle every word in an English language question, and it's meaning is still held. Shop, where is the? Where Shop is? Is the shop, where? This works (to a lesser extent) in entire sentences, because words don't gain new endings or meaning in any instance whatsoever.

There are a couple of odd aspects. Such as Go (present and future tence) and Went (past tence) which seemingly have no connection. But this is a vocabluary issue, which can be fixed by learning the vocablary.

It was streamlined again and again and again through history. The only problem I've heard people have is that pronounciation is irregular.

Furthermore, non english speakers have two other factors that make it easier for them to learn. Firstly, in most cases, particularly the Scandinavian countires, but to a lesser extent, all european countries; they are exposed to English phrases, sentences and the language in general through music and films from a very young age. Secondly, they have very important economic reasons to learn it. It has an incredibly important utility. Whereas the imemdiate pressure of learning another language in English speaking nations is absent.

[Devrim]

As for Turkish, having had a little look at it, it doesn't seem too rediculous.

Try saying this word after a few beers:

muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebilecekleri mizdenmişsinizcesine

Edit: That should be one word not two. The software on the website must have separated them.


I wasn't aware that it was quite as streamlined as you made it out to be. Is the same true of Crimean Tatar and Gaugaz? (if that's spelt right)

I don't know about Crimean Tartar, Gaugaz (I presume that you mean European Turkish, not the other language with the same name spoken in Moldova) is to what I know pretty much the same as modern Turkish. We once met a speaker in Bratislava, we chatted for about five minutes and I didn't notice any difference.


Actually, English hardly has any noticable grammer. We have only one article for anything, in any situation at any time. No formal or informal language. No Gender. No inflection. No Case. No adjective endings. No mutations.

Of course English has grammar. The reason that English speakers don't notice it is that they are not generally taught it in school like people in many European countries. You could start with twelve tenses (depending how you define them).


Infact, you can reshuffle every word in an English language question, and it's meaning is still held. Shop, where is the? Where Shop is? Is the shop, where? This works (to a lesser extent) in entire sentences, because words don't gain new endings or meaning in any instance whatsoever.

But they are wrong. You can say basic things in most languages, get the words mixed up and people would still understand you. In fact though in languages with case the word order matters less. For example in English the question 'Did John hit Peter?' depends very much on word order as the subject and the object would be confused if they were put in a different order. In languages with cases which show the relationship of the noun to the verb, this isn't a problem.

Devrim

[meow]

language is shit. language is where human fell down. we all better of without language.

[Forward Union]

language is shit. language is where human fell down. we all better of without language.

I want to thank this post.

[Bilan]

Russian is hard. Extremely hard. My girlfriend is Russian, and she has taught me a few phrases (how to say my name, 'how are you', 'i love you', etc.).
The pronunciation is very hard to get right.

As for German, I grew up in a family that was half Australian and half Austrian. I can understand a bit of it, but not as much as i used to (I study french now anyway).

Also, where did you get the idea that English is easy? Australian-English is particularly bad, primarily because it makes no sense.
(I am referring to the scarcely audible, slang, interpretative form of Australian English; I mean interpretative in the Arj Barker sense: that the listener interprets what the speaker is saying, because Australian's make up words on the spot, and these are acceptable).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4no92237CU

[NecroCommie]

I hate swedish passionately. We have now studied an entire week of irregular verbs. For noobs, it means an entire week of memorizig words that follow absolutely no logic at all.

[Forward Union]

Also, where did you get the idea that English is easy?

From living abroad and being told that by numerous people who have learnt English, from Linguistic students, professors, from my own understanding of English grammer (which is incredibly standardised) and from the fact that I've never heard anyone say English was hard until yesterday in this thread. But if you cast the net wide enough you will find people who find anything difficult.

Appart from double meanings, like "The bandage was wound around the wound." and the consiquent pronounciation inconsistencies, the language is incredibly simplistic. And appears even more so when compared to any other language. I mean, I think the English word with the most meanings is round, 'to buy a round' to 'go round' or 'the ring was round' but even if there is one with more, it's a mild issue, when considering German has 150 meanings for the word Zug, though Google translate can only be bothered to list the first 40:


noun

train
move
tension
procession
pull
feature
trait
draft
platoon
course
expedition
strain
characteristic
stroke
touch
puff
drag
migration
gulp
campaign
streak
tug
slide
stop
flight
section
breath
flock
catch
swig
haul
whiff
shoal
groove
team
mouthful
up-draft
transmigration
draw string
truck and trailer

But then the actual difficulty of a language is hard to measure. Languages can only really be difficult, in comparison to other languages. Though the age of native competancy is also worth looking it to (the age a child can read and write that language) but I don't trust this as it can be a result of bad education systems etc. Also, exposure to the language. So, if I had heard Japenese all my life, then despite being a native English speaker I would pick it up regardelss.

On this point, the hardest language to learn (if we want to take the question literally) for anyone is probably Sentinalese. An unknown language spoken on an Island in the Indian ocean by a tribe of about 200 people. It can't be studied because everyone who has ever visited the island was promptly killed by the inhabitants.

[Honggweilo]

Actually, they always get up early in the morning to steal all the good spots on the beach by digging ditches for themselves.

You forgot to mention the bikes

[Honggweilo]

now that we're on about this, lets talk about the difficulty of english grammar

Their, There, They're
Where, we're, were

[Wanted Man]

now that we're on about this, lets talk about the difficulty of english grammar

Their, There, They're

We can thank the Norse for those.

[Comrade Wolfie's Very Nearly Banned Adventures]

Ancient Greek is worse. It has words that mean nothing but you have to put them in a sentance and say them.

W.T.F.

[Invincible Summer]

From living abroad and being told that by numerous people who have learnt English, from Linguistic students, professors, from my own understanding of English grammer (which is incredibly standardised) and from the fact that I've never heard anyone say English was hard until yesterday in this thread. But if you cast the net wide enough you will find people who find anything difficult.

Appart from double meanings, like "The bandage was wound around the wound." and the consiquent pronounciation inconsistencies, the language is incredibly simplistic.
I think it's mainly the pronunciation inconsistencies that really fuck people up.

Hell, even native English speakers can't figure out how to "sound out" new words because it could be a variety of options. At least German has a consistent phonetic structure.


And appears even more so when compared to any other language. I mean, I think the English word with the most meanings is round, 'to buy a round' to 'go round' or 'the ring was round' but even if there is one with more, it's a mild issue, when considering German has 150 meanings for the word Zug, though Google translate can only be bothered to list the first 40:
I'm not a native speaker, nor am I an expert on German, but I'm pretty sure only the first few are used. It's possible that many of the definitions are really antiquated.




Ancient Greek is worse. It has words that mean nothing but you have to put them in a sentance and say them.

W.T.F.
Ancient Greek language = some zany post-post-modernism

[revolution inaction]

Ancient Greek is worse. It has words that mean nothing but you have to put them in a sentance and say them.

W.T.F.

is this like with Japanese with indicator words that tell you the status of proceeding word in the sentence, but don't mean anything on there own?

[RedAnarchist]

I've never tried to learn German because, personally, it looks too difficult for me to learn (I'm not great at learning foreign languages). I've tried learning Swedish, Spanish, Dutch and Esperanto before and I think I know Esperanto the most out of those four, although I can read languages far better than I can write or speak in those languages.

[Devrim]

From living abroad and being told that by numerous people who have learnt English, from Linguistic students, professors, from my own understanding of English grammer (which is incredibly standardised) and from the fact that I've never heard anyone say English was hard until yesterday in this thread. But if you cast the net wide enough you will find people who find anything difficult.

I have heard lots of people who say that English is difficult, and I imagine my experience is a little wider than yours if only because I am older and have lived in about half a dozen different countries.


Appart from double meanings, like "The bandage was wound around the wound." and the consiquent pronounciation inconsistencies, the language is incredibly simplistic. And appears even more so when compared to any other language. I mean, I think the English word with the most meanings is round, 'to buy a round' to 'go round' or 'the ring was round' but even if there is one with more, it's a mild issue, when considering German has 150 meanings for the word Zug, though Google translate can only be bothered to list the first 40:

Take a simple English word like 'put'. Webster has 24 different enteries for it with the first having 8 different meanings without counting the phrasal verbs.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/put


But then the actual difficulty of a language is hard to measure. Languages can only really be difficult, in comparison to other languages. Though the age of native competancy is also worth looking it to (the age a child can read and write that language) but I don't trust this as it can be a result of bad education systems etc.

I don't think that literacy is necessarily directly related to learning a language, though it can be connected. I know many old women who are illiterate, and have learned Turkish, some as a foreign language being native Kurdish speakers.


I think it's mainly the pronunciation inconsistencies that really fuck people up.

Hell, even native English speakers can't figure out how to "sound out" new words because it could be a variety of options. At least German has a consistent phonetic structure.

I don't think that they do really. Native English speakers don't know how to pronounce a word until they hear it either.

Devrim

[Adi Shankara]

Actually, English hardly has any noticable grammer. We have only one article for anything, in any situation at any time. No formal or informal language. No Gender. No inflection. No Case. No adjective endings. No mutations.

well we do actually have gender somewhat, and that's what makes it complex, because often times, it's a completely different root word from it's counterpart.

take the word "boy". what's the opposite? "Girl". or "King" whats the opposite? "Queen". certain words also do have gender in the real sense, for example, "Priest", "priestess". with the exception of "him" "her" and "she", "he", I think the gender only extends to nouns.

as far as inflections go, we do have them, and indeed, English has some aspects of tonal language whereas meaning can be gauged by the tone, (but it's not a true tonal language seeing as no words are tonal specific) or inflection. for example, Chinese (from what I know) has no inflection for questions, where English does. sarcasm, which is heavy in the english language, is dependent on inflections as well.

Infact, you can reshuffle every word in an English language question, and it's meaning is still held. Shop, where is the? Where Shop is? Is the shop, where? This works (to a lesser extent) in entire sentences, because words don't gain new endings or meaning in any instance whatsoever.

but not in sentences with two nouns. for example, if the original sentence is "the fox beat the dog", then if you mix it, it could be "the fox dog beat the". how would you know who beat who?


There are a couple of odd aspects. Such as Go (present and future tence) and Went (past tence) which seemingly have no connection. But this is a vocabluary issue, which can be fixed by learning the vocablary.

this is actually very common though with the most common of verbs though, for example, the past and future tense of "bring" is brought (which you can see, would lead to lots of confusion in just that one word), past tense of "drink" is drunk, etc. etc.


It was streamlined again and again and again through history. The only problem I've heard people have is that pronounciation is irregular.

which is a huge obstacle.


Furthermore, non english speakers have two other factors that make it easier for them to learn. Firstly, in most cases, particularly the Scandinavian countires, but to a lesser extent, all european countries; they are exposed to English phrases, sentences and the language in general through music and films from a very young age. Secondly, they have very important economic reasons to learn it. It has an incredibly important utility. Whereas the imemdiate pressure of learning another language in English speaking nations is absent.

agree with you here.

[RedAnarchist]

Here's my profile on Livemocha - http://www.livemocha.com/profiles/view/3976464. You can see some of my writing and speaking submissions in Esperanto, Spanish and Swedish.

[Adi Shankara]

Here's my profile on Livemocha - http://www.livemocha.com/profiles/view/3976464. You can see some of my writing and speaking submissions in Esperanto, Spanish and Swedish.

People really learn that? and cool website, looks like I'll be joining :)

[Widerstand]

Pretty cool website indeed.

[RedAnarchist]

People really learn that? and cool website, looks like I'll be joining :)

Yeah, and it can help with learning other languages.

[Adi Shankara]

Yeah, and it can help with learning other languages.

well someone is going to learn Indonesian... =D

but I'm dissappointed that there is no Khmer...(yet there is Azeri for some reason) My girlfriend has been trying to teach me Khmer with no success because she just can't really teach that well. :lol:

[The Red Next Door]

ist zu spat fur das.

[Forward Union]

well we do actually have gender somewhat, and that's what makes it complex, because often times, it's a completely different root word from it's counterpart.

take the word "boy". what's the opposite? "Girl". or "King" whats the opposite? "Queen". certain words also do have gender in the real sense, for example, "Priest", "priestess". with the exception of "him" "her" and "she", "he", I think the gender only extends to nouns.

Boy and Girl are not articles of Gender in linguistic terms. If you want to use your own definition of Gender then by all means do so, but make that clear. In lignusitics, they are descriptions of different things, in that, one actually has a penis, and the other doesn't. Thats the same as saying "Male" and "Female" are different words, so therefore there is Gender. As for Him and Her, yes, these are relics but are only applied to things that actually are hims or hers (in a biological sence), and can be deduced 100% of the time on that one simple rule. We dont call fish "her" and it's tail "him".

I would say that calling ships, nations, and nature "her" is simply an idiom, that has no bearing on an analysis of the language in general.


which is a huge obstacle.

Not really. You can learn to read and write without having to worry about pronounciation, and if you did pronounce things wrong, it is normally still apparent what you have said. It's more like a polishing than a structural necessity.

[L.A.P.]

Maybe Tokio Hotel would seem like a better band if I couldn't understand their shitty lyrics, even though the sound itself is equally terrible. I don't think that horrible emo band will be many people's motivation to learn german.

[Widerstand]

Maybe Tokio Hotel would seem like a better band if I couldn't understand their shitty lyrics, even though the sound itself is equally terrible. I don't think that horrible emo band will be many people's motivation to learn german.

JmUfyOoHGqI

Sounds better?