Is German Hard To Learn? (Helpful Content)

German is relatively difficult for an English speaker to learn, although certainly a great deal easier than many languages. It is closely related to English giving a considerable leg up to English speakers trying to learn it. The grammar is exceptionally complex, in a variety of ways, making it harder to get to grips with.

So, the simple answer is yes, German is hard to learn.

Any language is difficult to learn, of course, and there are, naturally, languages that are a great deal harder than German to learn.

Nonetheless, German is uniquely complex in a lot of ways and this has often presented problems for those trying to learn it.

Let’s find out more.

How long does it take to learn German?

The answer to this question always depends on the person.

Everyone learns and absorbs languages at different rates, no matter the relative ease or difficulty of the language in question.

That said, there are some rough, estimated figures we can put to how long it takes to learn German.

This is according to the FSI scale, a U.S. system that rates languages based on their relative difficulty levels.

I’ll go into more detail on German’s place on that scale shortly.

For now, according to that scale and of course the recommendations and expertise of qualified language tutors, the best general estimate is that it takes people, on average, 750 hours of study to become fluent or at least be at the point that you can conduct yourself in German.

So, this would end up being around 30 weeks of full-time studying.

That’s 7 months.

While this might seem like a relatively short amount of time to be able to learn a language, it’s a long time to commit to studying any one thing.

It’s going to take patience and commitment—there is no shortcut.

Even then, once you’ve finished your studies, you’ve still got a ways to go in becoming fully comfortable and familiar with the language.

Ideally, at this point, you would go and spend some time living in Germany or a German-speaking country, like Austria or Switzerland.

From there, you can slowly build up your knowledge to the point of full fluency.

The full process, then, takes years and will vary a great deal in total length based on the person.

Most would agree, though, that the initial 7 months of study are going to be the most crucial stage of the process.

What level of difficulty is German?

So, we touched on the FSI scaling system which rates languages based on their relative difficulty for an English speaker to learn.

Where does German fit on this scale?

The scale is from I to V, I being the easiest and V being the most difficult. German is a category II language.

This means it’s relatively easy for an English speaker to learn, but not the easiest.

Category I includes languages like French and Spanish, the kinds of languages typically taught in U.S. high schools.

So, German is a bit more difficult to learn than that.

Of course, this scale is not an absolute metric, and again some people may find German easier to learn than others.

Whoever you are, it’s going to take time and commitment to learn the language.

Is German easy for an English speaker to learn?

No, it’s not easy for an English speaker to learn.

No matter the language you speak, learning German is going to require months of study and years of continued persistence in using the language after that.

That said, there are certainly advantages to being an English speaker when it comes to learning German.

German and English are both what are called Germanic languages.

They’re in the same family and thus share a great deal of vocabulary and semantics.

However, somewhat paradoxically, even as a language more closely related to English, German remains more difficult to learn than, say, the Romance languages such as French and Spanish.

Why exactly is this the case?

Why is German so difficult to learn?

There are many aspects of the German language that make it difficult to learn.

For one thing, the vocabulary is incredibly rich and complex and any one word might have dozens of synonyms.

The written language, too, is very different from the spoken one.

While this, naturally, is very often the case with languages, with German it is especially so.

Indeed, you could develop a fluent understanding of the written language in classes, but be completely stumped when it came to having a conversation.

German is also a gendered language, and has three genders.

This can be very difficult for English speakers to get to grips with, as there is not really any comparable system in English.

This also means that virtually any noun, on top of having dozens of synonyms, will also have multiple gender cases.

Certain sounds in German are also incredibly difficult for English speakers to pronounce.

Again, the spoken language can be a lot more difficult than the written.

Finally, syntax is very different in German, often putting the verb at the end.

This, too, is very hard for English speakers.

So, when it comes to whether or not a given language is difficult to learn, all we can really go on is comparisons to other languages.

And, relatively speaking, German is certainly quite a bit more difficult to learn than other languages—for an English speaker.

That said, being an English speaker does also give you a great head start in learning the language.

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