Is German Hard to Learn?

🇩🇪 According to Mark Twain, "once the German language gets hold of a cat, it's goodbye cat!" But is German really so bad? Is it difficult for English speakers? And most importantly, does the cat survive?! 🙀

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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Is German Hard?
0:19 - The Easy Parts
1:16 - The Harder Parts
1:19 - Pronunciation
2:20 - Building Words
3:13 - Building Sentences
4:27 - Gender and Articles
5:42 - Cases
6.22 - Pronouns
7:15 - Separable Verbs
8:35 - Prepositions
9:22 - The Silver Lining
9:52 - So… What’s the Verdict?

📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:

Special thanks to Holger Krueger for reviewing the German in this video.

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[TomWaldgeist]

We Germans dont hate Cases. We just speak or write and know what to use. And to the seperatable verbs: the context usually makes us understand immediately what someone says without even getting to the end.

[geordiegeorge]

As an Englishman who has lived in Germany all of his adult life, I still have a very strong English accent when speaking German. But don't be afraid to try speaking German. They find it very flattering, and will help you.

[Caine]

I just started learning it as I will be traveling to Berlin next summer and want to have a solid grasp of the language. The biggest challenges for me so far are the case system, word order, and remembering genders of nouns. But I've found so far the best way to learn it is naturally through comprehensible input. Listening to the same story told multiple times and picking up the grammar rules naturally is far more effective than trying to sit down, study, and memorize the rules.

[promilk]

I have been studying German since the pandemic started. This also helped me understand English better and improve it. It's a feeling like I am learning the grandpa of English.

[spanishforkidswithmissjuanita]

I have a soft spot in my heart for the German language. I love how precise it is.

[Daantophobia]

Thank god that I don't have to learn all this. It is always fascinating though to see what German looks like/feels like/hears like to non-natives.
To every German learner: I wish you best of luck and success :)

[jonasbrown]

i’m living in germany for my second year now and to be honest the language isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be. the rules can feel complicated or weird (from an english perspective) but everything is very logical and there aren’t too many exceptions. the only real issue is the genders, everything else is super manageable 👍🏻

[mattylamb]

It is essential to know the genders of the nouns in German, as you can only use the cases and adjectives properly if you know the genders!

[Wazkaty]

Thank you A LOT for presenting Deutsch with all this kindness! It pleases me a lot, German is a beautiful language underestimated! Thank for all your work, from France 🇫🇷 👋

[frigginjerk]

Ich lerne jetzt Deutsch, seit ein paar Jahre. Manchmal ist es schwer, aber Olly hat recht. Die Regeln sind schwierig, aber sie machen Sinn, wenn man sie versteht. Ich mich sage immer, Deutsch ist nicht Englisch... Es funktioniert anders (I'm sure there's a couple of mistakes or awkward phrasings in there.)

[zikoraifenneli]

For me personally, German isn't hard to learn.Its actually fun if you are motivated enough.German to me is just like English spoken with a Norwegian accent.As for the case system and grammar, I studied Latin and I can confidently say that German grammar is a walk in the park compared with the complications of Latin.In the end, it boils down to the Languages you already know and the passion you have for the language.

[owenbreward]

One thing I love about this channel is your free to give credit where credit is due. When you use clips from others channels you always give their channel a shout out. Kudos to you for doing so. It's the right thing to do both for the creator AND for us who may want to look up those channels for future reference. Please keep doing this. Very much appreciated all 'round.

[asaris_]

Well, let's say you can learn German in a fairly short amount of time to an extent that allows you to communicate basics... But oh boy, it can get so much more complex than that. 😅

Oh and another very basic thing about German grammar that many language learners struggle with is understanding that German sentence structure is a bit like those Russian dolls with a doll inside of a doll inside of a doll.
To be honest, as a native speaker I only realized that when I tried to help Japanese with learning German.
I remember one specifically who struggled with gender attachment of specific articles when there was an adjective in-between.
For example "das Haus" and "das alte Haus". He obviously had learned that "Haus" is "das", but was confused because it wasn't directly next to Haus in the second example and wanted to know which gender "alt" has.
Really made me think and realize that we use articles of any kind, detachable verbs and interpunction like... brackets in math.
Or in the case of the old house... Here's a fun little thing we can do:

Das seit Jahren verlassene, dem durch Wind und Wetter verursachten Verfall preisgegebene, im Vergleich mit den anderen Häusern der unmittelbaren Umgebung verhältnismäßig große, ziemlich alte, sich am Ende der letzten, sich zur Linken befindenden Seitenstraße befindliche Haus steht seit Langem zum Verkauf.

Subjects and their articles and compound verbs are grammatical units we can drag apart almost limitlessly to stick inside whatever belongs to it in a descriptive way. Like "(" and ")" brackets. And if, for whatever reason there's one of those missing, commas are a way to replace them. (Pro tip: NEVER skip out on your commas in German. There's cases where placing a comma in front or after a word or not at all can change the entire meaning of a sentence.)

Oh and don't get me started on the fun of capitalization in German. Endless torture, even for us. 🤣

EDIT: oh and don't forget the joy of dialects, which not only often include entirely different words but also right wrong grammar! What I mean by that? Grammar that would be horribly wrong by High German standard but is totally legit in dialect.
You're struggling with cases and genders? Try dealing with different dialects using them in "incorrect" ways... 🤣

EDIT EDIT: as someone pointed out, there was a faulty comma. Changed it. 😉

[ernestrodgers]

Olly, you hit it out of the park! You included clips of my favorite German YouTubers; Trixie, Anja, and Easy German! Vielen Dank und Frohes Neues Jahr 🙂

[ehrenmannkatharinerblum]

I know it was just the headline for your VPN-ad, but language-immersion is not as common in Germany as you might think. Germany has a very strong voice acting industry and every US or British movie/drama gets dubbed when it's licensed by a German media publisher. Even though the internet and especially YouTube opened up some new possibilities, watching OVs is still reserved for the cool kids here.

[graham]

Thanks Olly. As a struggling German learner who finds grammar very difficult your talks are great at giving an overview.

[timseguine]

I've never found German very difficult. The "difficult parts"(Case and Gender) don't actually matter that much in practice. You can largely pick them up just by exposure to them, and getting them wrong is generally not a big deal (It usually just sounds weird). You should definitely try to learn them, but language teachers usually make it out to be way more important than it is.

Pronunciation is the more important part, but I speak from experience when I say that people actually seem to be disappointed if you are from a foreign country and don't speak with an accent. People always seem disappointed that I don't use an American R sound except occasionally by mistake when there is a foreign English word in the same sentence.

[peterkesseler]

Hallo Olly. Viele Grüße aus Deutschland. Deine Videos sind immer sehr interessant! Danke und frohe Weihnachten 🙂

[paholainen]

As a student of German for many years, I’d say The difficulty of German is greatly exaggerated and those really long words are hardly used in my opinion. Not easy but not super difficult, good video

[JohnSmith-gioy]

I love this language. It’s becoming my second language at a rapid rate; almost 5 months in!