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Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 9 2008, 09:41 PM

So one of my favorite bands is all German and their lyrics are in German (Rammstein, I am sure you have heard of them).

Well I already speak pretty good Spanish and am fairly deep into Chinese (although you have to go INCREDIBLY deep to get anywhere with this language!). So I decided I might give German a try. I went to Barnes N' Nobles and picked up a German instructional book to read in the store.

The first chapter was just showing how phonetic German is and how there are many cognates and all between English. It seemed great at first. Then I turned to the next chapter and it is about verb conjugation and how you have to change the verb endings according to the subject, same thing as Spanish, not such a big deal. THEN I turn to the next chapter and it says "Declension" then I look down and see these things called cases and how you have to change the endings of articles, adjectives, and nouns based on how the subject is used in the sentence, AND then decline them even more based on gender. Ok if this wasn't enough to make me close the book and give up immediately, I looked at the next page and read that most German nouns have irregular plural forms, jesus, why can't they just add "S?" I turn to back of book and see that the section on irregular verbs is like 10x as long as the section on regular verbs.

So does anyone know...behind the INSANE amount of irregular stuff and ridiculous grammar rules, is German easy at all?

Posted by: ZakkWylde Jul 9 2008, 09:43 PM

Yep our grammar makes no sense at all and you can only do it right when you grew up with it...

Posted by: Caelumamittendum Jul 9 2008, 09:47 PM

I had german for three years, though I missed most classes one of the years due to rehabilitation because of a knee injury. However, I had a very hard time learning the language - the grammar and all is very difficult, I'd say.

Posted by: IDontWantMyUsername Jul 9 2008, 09:51 PM

German is obligatory at school here in Norway, I don't understand why!

Posted by: Tolek Jul 9 2008, 09:52 PM

I was born in Germany and have it at school. The grammar is pretty simple for me. Writing some good essays is more difficult

Posted by: chmilew Jul 9 2008, 09:52 PM

I took german for 5 years at school but I can't write one sentence right
Just remember few words..

Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 9 2008, 09:54 PM

Articles

English- 2
Spanish- 8
Chinese- 0
German- 28

WTF

Posted by: Caelumamittendum Jul 9 2008, 09:55 PM

"Ich habe eine räuber gegessen" is all I can say in German these days, though it doesn't make sense.

Posted by: TreyDeschamp Jul 9 2008, 09:58 PM

I think German is very hard I've tried and given it up!

Posted by: jacmoe Jul 9 2008, 10:04 PM

I think the only way to learn German is to actually live in Germany for a good while.
You need to hear that language.
A lot of people, even from Germany, listen their way through the language, blessfully ignorant of the underlying and obscure grammatical ruleset.

Posted by: Nazgul Jul 9 2008, 10:08 PM

You're damn right man. I am from Germany and really, our grammar doesn't make sense. But anyways, I have no problems with it.

Therefore I love English. It is quite is easy to learn, not much grammar and of course, it sounds so cool.

Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 9 2008, 10:12 PM

Yes that is why I don't see why all these sources claim that German and Spanish are among the easiest languages while Chinese for example, is considered the hardest. I have yet to encounter anything difficult in Chinese. German was difficult on the third page.



Yea British English isn't that difficult, but American English is incredibly difficult (from what I hear). For example in Britain the word "bait" is pronounced like it is spelled while in American it is pronounced "beit," the same applies with many other words, they aren't said anything like they are spelled. Of course I still can't figure out how laugh is prounced "laf" in Britain or "laef" in America.

Posted by: Juan M. Valero Jul 9 2008, 10:12 PM

English is one of the easiest languages in the Globe... and I just can understand it with lot of difficulties and write it with lot of misspellings... SO I don't want to imagine how hard would be German !!!!

Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 9 2008, 10:18 PM

Well German is definately easier to write I guess. For exampe, house is spelled and pronounced "Haus," and its rules for pronunciation are pretty standard while in Britain they are loose and don't really exist in American English.

I swear why does every language have to have something insanely hard about it.

English- Moderate grammar, not phonetic in writing.
German- Phonetic, insane grammar
Chinese- No articles, no verb tenses, no plural nouns, excuse for a grammar "system," but wait a writing system consisting of 8,000 pictures instead of a simple 26 letter alphabet. Also tone system and the fact that the word "shi" for example is homophone for 82 different meanings.
Spanish- Extremely phonetic, as well as the fact that there is simply not enough sounds and there is like 5-8 syllables and 5 vowels in every word so it always just sounds like a gigantic slur of "a" "e" "i" "o" and "u" with some consonants here and there.

Posted by: Siggum Jul 9 2008, 10:18 PM

Sag mall spinst du? Deutsch is eine sehr gute sprach!! LoL i used to rock at it cause my step mom was from germany, but over the years ive forgotten most.

Posted by: stickyfingers Jul 9 2008, 10:19 PM

ich finde es garnicht so schwer ;D

just forget about proper articles and declination - most germans don't get it either

build a sentence S-V-O and you'll be fine, let us germans figure out what you mean. ^^

if you really want to get into that language listen as often as you can to native speakers to get the hang of it

Posted by: Canis Jul 9 2008, 11:37 PM

Huh? When did that happen? I'm starting VG3 now, and haven't had a single german class

Posted by: tonymiro Jul 9 2008, 11:42 PM

One of my roles is academic proofreading and so I'd say English is an easy language to learn but extremely hard to master. As a spoken language it is neither phonetic nor follows uniform and consistent rules. So overall I'd have to say that it isn't an easy language at all .

Cheers,
Tony

Posted by: Trond Vold Jul 9 2008, 11:51 PM

We had an option between french and german when i went to school but I cant remember if any of it were obligatory. It was too long ago

Posted by: Caelumamittendum Jul 9 2008, 11:59 PM

In Denmark there's an option for either French or German too.

Posted by: FrankW Jul 10 2008, 12:33 AM

I took German for four years. I enjoyed it, though I've gotten out of practice after many years of non-usage. I guess, in order to become adept at any particular language, you must live it. But, Shellshock, if you're getting any kind of handle on Chinese, I would think that German wouldn't be as much of a challange. Do those Rosetta Stone language instructional CDs work well ? I was thinking of studying Venusian so I can communicate better with women...or is it Martian?

Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 10 2008, 01:20 AM

Chinese is hard in a different way than German though. With Chinese you can sit down with a character book and learn some characters for a while and then communicate just by writing down the characters you learned in the proper order...it is almost impossible to be wrong grammatically, because there is almost no grammar at all.

That is why you hear Chinese people say stuff like "I be at store" "You get in car," and it sounds really immature English. And when you translate Chinese literally into English, it sounds rather immature. There is no such thing as conjugation and no such thing as declension at all, no such thing as irregular anything because there is nothing that can be irregular.

And yea I doubt anyone on Earth commands 2 languages. Sure plenty of people will say they are fluent in like 20, but may be fluent in 2 max and don't command their second language as far as vocabulary, grammar, and idiomatic expressions go. Idiomatic expressions is a BIG one that people always forget, if you haven't mastered it, you aren't fluent.

There was once this guy on a forum that claimed to speak like 9 languages. I wanted to test his vocab, so I gave him some somewhat rarely used, but simple words.

Dog Leash
Shaving Razor
Mesh/Lattice
Shiver

Not suprisingly, he couldn't name any one of them in ANY of the 9 "languages" he claimed to know.

Posted by: Disturbed21 Jul 10 2008, 01:25 AM

took german last year in high school. found it easy to learn all the crap about irregular endings, conjugations,etc. only problem was actually saying it right (lol) but that went away after a while.

Posted by: The Uncreator Jul 10 2008, 01:28 AM

I actually didnt think it was that bad, Im sure spanish is easier. I can speak it pretty well, But i cant write it to save my life

Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 10 2008, 01:32 AM

What? How is that possible? Don't you HAVE to read and write to learn how to speak in the first place when it comes to a second language. The only people I have ever heard of being able to speak good but write and read bad are native speakers or something. And Spanish is definately easier grammar wise but overall I don't know. Listen to Rammstein and Heroes de Silencio, with Rammstein, I can make out each individual word with Heroes, it is just like a bunch of vowels. German uses too many consonants, Spanish uses too many vowels. I think English is about in the middle. Not to mention how Spanish slurs so much because like every word ends in a vowel, like I said. Classic example for me was when I heard this native speaker talking, this was me learning Spanish early on. First thing he says is "Voy a" which means "I am going to..." I was scratching my head trying to figure out what a "Boya" is for like 5 seconds, by then he was already like 50 words ahead.

Posted by: The Uncreator Jul 10 2008, 01:48 AM

I just forget spelling and stuff, Not that hard to see really, I can remember enunciation and meaning, proper placement in sentence. I just forget how to spell some words.

Oh and the articles (Der, Die, Das) I screw up sometimes. Nothing like having a "masculine" building or something

Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 10 2008, 01:57 AM

That is another thing I can't stand, in Spanish it is pretty easy to distinguish between masculine and feminine words just based on the words themselves, but in German, it is more or less random, it seems.

Posted by: The Uncreator Jul 10 2008, 03:05 AM

Yeah it kinda is, And its not only masculine and feminine, there's also neuter too. Which is thrown in randomly

Posted by: IDontWantMyUsername Jul 10 2008, 03:16 AM

What? Have you had Spanish or anything like that then? You do at least have to learn one additional language apart from English and Norwegian, don't you? I'm starting at VGS now this autumn, and as far as I've understood, I will have to take German classes...

Posted by: JVM Jul 10 2008, 03:25 AM

So as someone who took 3 years of spanish and has always had a hard time writing even simple sentences correctly, what do you guys think is the easiest non english language to get a firm grasp on? One thing someone (shellshock?) mentioned about spanish was that it very commonly ends in vowels.. combined with the fact that most spanish speakers speak the language very fast. To my ears this makes it seem to blend together into one long word chained together by these vowels.

I've always been interested in learning other languages. I'd like to give greek or latin a crack, but I don't have the faintest clue how hard or not they are.

As a speaker/writer, in general I have a pretty firm grasp of english grammar and vocabulary, at least to the extent where anyone can understand me. Past that point, I ignore pointless rules. For example, the who/whom thing is pretty pointless in my eyes. And forget about essay and paragraph formatting and all that nonsense, I'll format my words however I want and as long as my sentences are easy to understand the whole thing is. I wonder if there is a language that skips past the nonsense and is just simple to understand.. a matter of learning basic grammar and vocabulary..?

Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 10 2008, 03:35 AM

That would be Chinese for you, really basic grammar and vocabulary is based on all literal terms. For example the word for "lantern" is just a combination of "fire" and "nail" so the word is like "firenail," closest English equivalent I can come up with is "manpower." In Chinese, most words are like that. However, enjoy the 8,000 pictures you have to learn.

Posted by: JVM Jul 10 2008, 03:46 AM

Wonderful, except for the 8000 pictures

I don't mind learning completely different grammar setups as long as it isnt a mess of confusing patch-up jobs, which seems to be the case for most languages. I don't think there's a language that exists that was made with "being easy to learn for a foreign speaker" high up on the list of necessities. I really just don't like the irregular stuff, it seems quite ridiculous to me. If I hadn't already learned the irregular english stuff I'd probably say to hell with it! I may pick up a book on chinese now though, would you suggest mandarin?

Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 10 2008, 03:53 AM

Yes, yes of course. And actually the total number of characters in use is 8,000, TOTAL number being 50,000, but there was a study done that came out with 700 of the most common characters make up I think it was 82% of average Chinese literature and writings, and 2,000 characters make up 97%. And the characters are actually very fun to learn, so that shouldn't be an issue. Also Chinese has a tone system where if you change the tone of a word, the meaning changes, there is 4 total tones in Mandarin, 8 Taiwanese, 9 in Cantonese lol WTF. It isn't near as bad as it sounds though, the tones are extremely distinct from one another. Another difficulty with Chinese is the intense amount of homphones. Saying "shi" in Chinese can mean 82 different things for example, and since there are 4 tones, you are talking about 20 homophones per syllable, however they are all different characters

Each character represents one syllable, yep probably knew that. There are several big dialects, but they all write the same thing, so the writing system is very important.

Funniest thing about Chinese is "shi" sounds just like sh*t, and the word used to negate "shi" in Chinese, like the English "no" or "not" is "bu." So you have "shi" and "bu shi" or sh*t and bullsh*t, what a coicodence...

Posted by: stickyfingers Jul 10 2008, 06:29 AM

i guess french is quite regular and logical - not too many irregular verbs and easy declination. pronunciation might be an issue, though.

Posted by: swingline Jul 10 2008, 06:47 AM

French is easy in some respects but it can get relatively complicated. A simple understanding of the language is quite easy but becoming fluent is pretty difficult. There is 12 articles and it is not uncommon to modify verbs to agree with gender. They are also very picky on amounts and you must specify with things with a quantitative holder. I'd imagine it is easier than German but it is still one of the tougher languages to become fluent in. I can write French fairly fluently but ask me to speak it and I suck, I just can't get any form of accent (except American of course. ).

Posted by: stickyfingers Jul 10 2008, 08:15 AM

yeah, i suppose youre right... it has been a while since i had french in school. i had been better at writing than speaking, too. but i always had the feeling that if you learned basic grammar rules and the few irregularities you could rely much more on those rules than for example in german.

once we had an exchange with french students years ago and they had been learning german for about 9 years already while we had french for about 4 years. they literally could barely express themselves orally while we were babbling french quite fluently using gerunds and stuff. then again their school had a complete different concept of teaching foreign languages. we attended one of their classes and their teacher stood in front of them - they would write down every word he said without ever saying anything. i dunno if that has changed these days.

Posted by: swingline Jul 10 2008, 08:19 AM

That seems like a real poor way to teach, in all of my classes that I have ever taken English was spoken quite often to convey thoughts and to tech in general, the farther I got along the less English was spoken but still.

Posted by: erik Jul 10 2008, 12:41 PM

No it's not (at least it wasn't when I was in junior high just three years ago )

Posted by: Nighthawk Jul 10 2008, 12:59 PM

You should really invest your time in something more fulfilling than learning German...it's very difficult...of course depends on what YOUR mother tongue is...but the most rules really don't make sense in German

Posted by: Gerardo Siere Jul 10 2008, 01:32 PM

MMm I tried German for to weeks at a lyrycal singers class and I dropped, the gramar is too strange, I tried some Japanese (I play go) very few words, acording to their combination and the situation you get the meaning, I´m thinking in take some lessons again, have watched a lot of movies so I got familiar with the few things I knew. About english, I can understand almost anything people talk to me, (thank you South Park) but I´m pretty in troble when talking or writting

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Jul 10 2008, 02:19 PM

Here we had to learn German from3 grade of elementary school. I still remember a few things oddly, like wo wonst du, or wi heist du (don't know if I spelled it correctly)

Posted by: JuanMV Jul 10 2008, 07:09 PM

As with anything in life, some people have certain abilities that make them learn a languange more rapidly. I am a Spanish native speaker and I learnt English because I had to. But one thing is for sure: I know nothing about grammatical rules, not even in Spanish! So I agree that in the end of the day, and unless you are really smart, the only way to develop fluency in a different language is by actually living for some time in a country where that language is spoken. You are just forced to be learning 24x7 you know. Travelling a lot also helps.

Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 10 2008, 08:54 PM

Aye, Spanish grammar isn't that bad anyway. The only thing that was a bit confusing at first was the subjunctive mood, because we don't use that at all in English, well we do, but we don't change anything in the sentence when we used the subjunctive mood. After a bit of study, it made sense, and the rest, grammar wise, has been pretty easy.

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Jul 10 2008, 09:27 PM

I tried to learn it once , didn't go well (I survived 3 days on the course before quiting)

Posted by: VinceG Jul 10 2008, 10:16 PM

Haha English for me was very easy to learn. Its very easy to grasp. Wanna know how I learned English in a fluent matter? Watch a lot of HBO the day we first got cable when I was 8. I didn't actually started speaking English till I moved in America when I was 13 though.

I also grew up in Philippines which had over 50 different languages aside from Tagalog.

Posted by: swingline Jul 10 2008, 10:21 PM

Everybody here in America who are native speakers say that English is by far the hardest language to learn, but all of you guys say it was simple, and you guys speak English very well. (Or at least type it well. ) Its mostly foreign language teachers who say that so I suppose that it is only threats.

Posted by: Marcus Siepen Jul 10 2008, 10:31 PM

Yes, German is easy... if you are German

Posted by: erik Jul 10 2008, 10:45 PM

Norwegian and German both inherit from an old language called germanic or something.. So in 9th grade I managed to translate an entire page of german into norwegian from the 9th grade german book without ever being in a german class. We start learning a third language in 8th grade, I chose French and I can't understand anything french! I bet that text was really easy though, but it just shows how related languages are always easier to learn. I learned English pretty easy too, maybe because of a lot of English words come from the Norwegian vikings.

Posted by: Nighthawk Jul 10 2008, 10:48 PM

Not bad Ivan I'm impressed Almost right wo woHnst du, wiE heisst du

Posted by: Canis Jul 10 2008, 11:20 PM

Nothing besides Norwegian and English... But I've been on electro for two years, so maybe some foreign language comes to bite my ass when I start Allmenn Påbygning next year

Posted by: JuanMV Jul 10 2008, 11:41 PM

Shell, you are way beyond me with all that stuff man... honestly, I don't know what you are talking about. You probably know more Spanish grammar than me! I know, I shouldn't be laughing, but I would say that I'm the kind of guy that likes to learn things "empirically", and this is why I'm so addicted to GMC right now... because I can empirically learn how to play guitar...

Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 11 2008, 01:18 AM

Ha, it is ok, see like subjunctive is...

Espero que tengas dinero.

The first "espero" is in the indicative. It is a definite FACT that I hope that you have money. However "tengas" shows that you may or may not have money, I don't know, the only thing that is FACT is that I hope you have money. Subjunctive mood is when the speaker or whatever assumes something of another person or something like that, but it may or may not be true. Like "Espero que" "Quiero que" etc.

And of course formal commands always use the subjunctive..



Well reading and writing a foreign language is nothing compared to communicating and comprehending with native speakers in real life, who are probably going to be speaking extremely fast, without stopping, and using idiomatic speech. I can read and write Spanish very well, but throw me in with some native Spanish speakers and I struggle for real.

Posted by: JuanMV Jul 11 2008, 01:58 AM

En eso estamos de acuerdo Shell! Yo tambien espero tener mucho dinero algun dia...

Posted by: tonymiro Jul 11 2008, 02:04 AM

Siempre

Posted by: Juan M. Valero Jul 11 2008, 07:22 AM

Posted by: erik Jul 11 2008, 10:23 AM

Jeg er netopp ferdig med påbygning, du trenger ikke flere språk der Men så er jo du på den nye reformen da, så det kan ha endra seg..

Posted by: Canis Jul 11 2008, 03:33 PM

Nice ^^ Hadde ikke hatt noe imot spansk men... Kanskje som valgfag
Var det et hardt år?

Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 11 2008, 05:44 PM

Bueno suerte

Posted by: chmilew Jul 11 2008, 07:10 PM

French is easier, I guess..

Posted by: Canis Jul 11 2008, 10:38 PM

Isn't French incredible complex when it comes to grammar?

Posted by: Nazgul Jul 11 2008, 10:45 PM

I have French in school, and it is AWFUL. I like the language but the grammar is awful. A rule applies to 51% of the words ... and 49% are exceptions.

Posted by: kjutte Jul 14 2008, 03:57 PM

Eh, no it's not.

Posted by: Jeff Jul 14 2008, 04:13 PM

I took German in high school. That was many years ago but I still remember a few things. It was pretty difficult, but I had a decent teacher so that made it a little easier.

I find it funny, but I remember learning more German from Frank Zappa's "Joe's Garage" albums than I did in school.

Posted by: Disturbed21 Jul 14 2008, 09:45 PM

Learning German in High School while listening to german music must make it easier then (Thank you Rammstein ).

Posted by: tonymiro Jul 14 2008, 10:32 PM

But did you learn French using FZ's 'Zoot Allures' Jeff ?

Posted by: blindwillie Jul 15 2008, 12:46 AM

'boy are you going to fail in German! Missed every single class

Rammstein sounds silly in english, they require to be in German.

Posted by: Disturbed21 Jul 15 2008, 12:53 AM

+1 Although they do sound good in english (sometimes)

Posted by: Canis Jul 15 2008, 01:45 AM

Haha
The teacher looked at me funny once, so I left the class and ever went back

Posted by: Skalde Jul 15 2008, 10:51 PM

Deutsche Sprache - Schwere Sprache

Posted by: Jeff Jul 16 2008, 01:08 AM

No, I missed that one! ... searching, searching, damn ipod! I'll look that one up. You have sparked my curiosity.

Posted by: Rooks Jul 19 2008, 11:07 AM

All I know in German is automobile related. I worked as a mechanic at an Opel garage, and I was asked one day to retrofit a remote controlled diesel pre-heater with cabin controls and timer on, not original. And they said "Here is your german instruction book, now go" I haven't ever had a single word of German .. But I had to guess my way and it went quite well All I know is words like "Heizgerät" "Slauchschelle" "Kraftstofspympf" "Personkraftwagenunterstellungsplatz" ..

If your puzzled by German, go to war with learning Danish then.. Nothing is phonetic, the verbs don't make sense and we don't regular or irregular articles, they differ to each word and theres no rules for it.

Example: a train = et tog , a dog = en hund .. "a" is "et" to a train in Danish, and "en" to a dog .. And you just have to know .. It's all like that..

-Rooks

Posted by: Oxac Jul 19 2008, 11:58 AM

You should definitly start out by learning Swedish... I mean, the word genre is pronounced like Sjanger, though it should be pronounced like genre (if you follow the rules)

In some areas of Sweden you remove the R from some words like, farfar (grandfather on the fathers side, fathers father really..) being Fafa, morfar (mothersfather directly translated) being mofa.

We also have two different types of R, one made deep in the throat, like the root of the tounge, and then we have the R made by the tip of your tounge. Which one you use is up to you but the deep one is more south and the tip of the tounge is like more to the north.

We have two words for a and an (just like in enligsh, but they aren't based on any rule); en & ett. en bil (a car), ett äpple (an apple), en apelsin, ett apelsin (an orange, can be both en and ett) etc.

and is translated to och, och is pronounced ock.

it's bullshit really, but who cares

Posted by: shellshock1911 Jul 19 2008, 02:59 PM

Good thing I won't be learning those anytime soon, and good thing they are confided to relatively small populations! I think I will stick to Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, and maybe branch out into other romance languages and sino-tibetan languages because they are so similar to eachother, hell I could read some Japanese writing just because I know so many Chinese Characters, and all nouns and many other words have the exact same character in Chinese and Japanese. I think I'll keep the Scandanavian languages to themselves up North.

Posted by: Fidelman Jul 20 2008, 12:07 AM

Here in norway we get to learn, Spanish, italian, german, french or in some cases greek, latin or russian. Being the fool i am i chose german at a young age... i cry myself to sleep now...