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Getbig Main Boards => Gossip & Opinions => Topic started by: Balloon on January 04, 2013, 08:06:44 PM
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For a native english speaker, what are the tough aspects of learning German?
A lot of the words are similar to english words but the pronunciation and grammar seem tough.
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I believe it should be one of the easiest languages to learn for an English speaker, because English is derived from German.
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Learn mandarin
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Should be a piece of cake. This dude learned to speak it...
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Because I some practice have had, Can I the word order usually right get.
You'll have to come to terms with that and verbs & prepositions that affect adjective/article endings etc.
Luckily, most Germans speak good English. Donkey Kong was (sniff) the shining example & Stark is the steaming exception.
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wannsee conference
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Learn mandarin
Yeah, then you can converse with her.
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that little shit got to be talking english right
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For a native english speaker, what are the tough aspects of learning German?
A lot of the words are similar to english words but the pronunciation and grammar seem tough.
not really hard but i live here ;D
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Because I some practice have had, Can I the word order usually right get.
You'll have to come to terms with that and verbs & prepositions that affect adjective/article endings etc.
Luckily, most Germans speak good English. Donkey Kong was (sniff) the shining example & Stark is the steaming exception.
That's definitely not what I experienced while going there ???
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That's definitely not what I experienced while going there ???
most Germans speak "school English" and itīs not very good. Very basic stuff.
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most Germans speak "school English" and itīs not very good. Very basic stuff.
I'd say it's honestly embarrassing just how bad some of them were at english, some could not even string a single sentence together. At least west germany has been under western/american influence for quite some time now, how are they not any better at english??
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Yeah, then you can converse with her.
Is this a trap?
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I'd say it's honestly embarrassing just how bad some of them were at english, some could not even string a single sentence together. At least west germany has been under western/american influence for quite some time now, how are they not any better at english??
A good question. The Germans i know who were interested in the UK or US speak good English and had contact to English or american people(mainly soldiers). East Germans mainly speak Russian and Polish because in school they learned Russian. When i was in school here in Hannover learning sport admin (sport und fitnesskaufmann) i was the only non German and they had to learn English too so they could learn Business English. It never went that far, the English they learned was really,really basic. I helped a few people with it. if they had to learn what i learned in their language they would not understand anything. I of course had the advantage of a German wife and so learned fairly fast but my wife speaks fluent English too with a scottish dialect ;) my two sons speak German and English too,they went to German schools.
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itīs funny because i write German every day and it crosses over sometimes and i have to correct my own English spelling ???
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I've been living here for close to 5 years, I've taught in an academic high school and I currently teach business English to executives in an international medical tech company.
German was hard for me to learn, and from what I've seen, hard for other native English speakers to learn in comparison to languages like Spanish or French.
The vocab can at times be very similar if not the same. The grammar and cases make it hard going, and 3 genders for every noun complicates things a lot more than 2 do for something like French. That said, if you can immerse yourself, you can get to a reasonable standard pretty quickly. The earlier you learn, the better. One other thing I notice I have huge issues with. If you can think in an ordered fashion, it makes things easier. German is a language where, in order to form a sentence correctly, you have to know how you're going to finish before you start. It all happens in microseconds on a subconscious level, but if you're like me and have no idea what you want to say until you start talking, you can have a hell of a time with articles, cases and word order in German.
One thing I've noticed here and nowhere else in Europe. If you try and speak German and fuck it up, the Germans will pretty much always correct you. If you go to France (not Paris), and fuck up their beautiful language, they will love you for at least trying to speak it (in my experience). Italy too. In Germany you have to prepare yourself for a language lesson from some grumpy fucker.
Something else I notice (at least where I am) - you can have the tiniest mispronounciation of a word and no-body will understand you. I was talking about iPads yesterday and was calling them 'tablet computers'. No-one had a clue what I was saying until someone said "Ach - Tepplet!". It's not so different, but it happens all the freaking time - and my German accent is usually very good.
Germans speak terrible English in comparison to their northern neighbours and to Switzerland. Much better than Italians and Spaniards, but the general level of English here is a lot worse than you would expect. I'm sure it has to do with having all their films and television shows dubbed into German, instead of having original language with subtitles like in Holland and Scandinavia.
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Yes - a tough one. Even though it's my mother tongue I have problems on some of the constructs. I really prefer English but for certain fields of use, like poems, Deutsch/German is unbeatable in power, drama and expression.
"Austrian" is minimally different and only if you take Mundart/slang into account.
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german is one of the hardest languages to learn.
english is constructed many times easier.
yes Germans even have difficulty with their own Grammer i saw this too in school... I make mistakes too in my German Grammer but i mean who is perfekt ? "Der,Die,Das...this is the Question.. ;D
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I'd say it's honestly embarrassing just how bad some of them were at english,
for you or them?
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for you or them?
hey my english might not be perfect either, but at least I can make myself understood.
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hey my english might not be perfect either, but at least I can make myself understood.
exactly
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Yes - a tough one. Even though it's my mother tongue I have problems on some of the constructs. I really prefer English but for certain fields of use, like poems, Deutsch/German is unbeatable in power, drama and expression.
"Austrian" is minimally different and only if you take Mundart/slang into account.
german is very precise language, that makes it difficult
on the other hand this precision is needed to express difficult things in a precise manner
this may be the reason why germany has the leading position in all aspecs of science for hundrets of years now.
for more simple everyday conversation of the "regular people" the germans have a lot of simplified versions, no one her would understand even if he s an german teacher by himself
and like galain wrote - you have to think before you start speaking
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I'm sure it has to do with having all their films and television shows dubbed into German, instead of having original language with subtitles like in Holland and Scandinavia.
all?
dont they make any film or TV of their own?
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german is way harder to learn than most other languages... way too hard for it to ever be used globally.
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all?
dont they make any film or TV of their own?
yes they make German films and tv series for TV..but the US and other films are dubbed in German...although Robert De niro sounds oK in German... ;D
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german is way harder to learn than most other languages... way too hard for it to ever be used globally.
good for americnas that german was just a few votes short ob becoming the official language in the USA
btw immigrants from germany were the biggest part of immigrants to america
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Balloon, I am an American, and I have recently hired a private tutor for German. I actually have my third lesson Tuesday. I am supplementing this with an Istart app, and YouTube vids and movies on Netflix. I really don't know shit yet, but am hoping to be able to somewhat converse with people when I go back next Christmas. I would say if you have extra money laying around, get a tutor. It is $50 and hour for me and my wife, and she comes to my house. She's not a native speaker, which was kind of a letdown but there are not many that I could find, but she lived in Germany for a few years and taught English at the university level there as well as teaches College German here now. I also posed this question a while back, and asked about German forums where you could read and pick up the language, which DKII pm'ed me. I figure that's what a lot of people do, like all of the paki gimmicks on here. It's easy to pick up slang on a place like this as opposed to speaking like you're writing a letter. Good luck.
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Because English is the present world language (because of America) and is difficult to not come across it is easy to forget just what a difficult and complicated language it would be to some one who never heard any thing of it before starting to learn it. Some of its spelling is all over the place, pronounciation of many words is arbitary and oblivious of the given alphabet sounds and its grammer rules are sometime obtuce and pedantic and beyond many native speakers. Although ofteh presented as an advantage native english speakers are disadvantaged by never having to learn other languages and therefore thing in different ways
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Irongrip400 - try this website
http://www.deutschseite.de/index.html
It was all put together by a German guy who was trying to help his (I think) Filipino girlfriend with the language. Outstanding resource to help back up what you're doing with your tutor.
BBC - yes - as Donny says - lots of German tv but all of the main tv series and movies from the US are dubbed. It's one of the very few things I really can't stand about living here. I hate it. Get into arguments about it all the time.
Funnily enough, my business English students have all said they prefer presenting in English to German because it's less complicated. That says a lot I think.
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I have got used to watching German tv..i only have cable tv so apart from BBC world and CNN itīs all German.
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Irongrip400 - try this website
http://www.deutschseite.de/index.html
It was all put together by a German guy who was trying to help his (I think) Filipino girlfriend with the language. Outstanding resource to help back up what you're doing with your tutor.
BBC - yes - as Donny says - lots of German tv but all of the main tv series and movies from the US are dubbed. It's one of the very few things I really can't stand about living here. I hate it. Get into arguments about it all the time.
Funnily enough, my business English students have all said they prefer presenting in English to German because it's less complicated. That says a lot I think.
From what my tutor tells me, there is a language council set up by the government, and she was saying that they are/were trying to delete some words like Frauline and letters like the scharfes s. I may be misspeaking as this was not actually part of the lesson, just something she was saying in passing. Thanks for the website, I need all the help I can get. I actually have Bluetooth and have the apps playing while driving. Trying to "immerse" myself.
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sprechen sie deutsch? why bother don't they have machines where you speak your native language in and out comes perfect germen er a deutsch which is german for some dumb reason. wolf is the same in both languages.all you need to know is where is the toilet and give me food. ;D ;D ;D
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For a native english speaker, what are the tough aspects of learning German?
A lot of the words are similar to english words but the pronunciation and grammar seem tough.
It's not that hard, I can speak a little German.
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Die Deutsche sprache:
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It's not that hard, I can speak a little German.
i like when a German girl talks dirty..
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Japanese is probably the hardest to learn.
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Don't know how to embed this but this lady shows how easy it is to translate into any language..
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Very guttural language!
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Sie sich ficken bitte selber.
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Sie sich ficken bitte selber.
I understand that, hahaha