Knowing both languages, here is my take: English has a really low entry threshold – meaning that it is quite easy to reach a level of basic understanding and conversation. But it does have a high ceiling. German is different – I feel it has both a high difficulty to understand and use it, as well as becoming eloquent in it. But let me explain it a bit more in detail.

The bit about English

English isn’t as complex in it’s grammar as other languages. There are rules, but not that many – and rarely do they have any exceptions. Now take this with a grain of salt, because I obviously don’t know every language on the planet – but I do have a basic knowledge (or had, back in school) of three other languages that I can base this conclusion on. That means that it’s simple to craft a sentence and the chance of it being correct is pretty high, once you understand the basic frame of the syntax (that’s the word order).

The most difficult thing for me to learn was the vocabulary. I tried to find a good source to look up how many words both English and German have, but all of them differed from another and none of them were clear, so I am not putting a guess out – but they all agreed that English had more. And that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. English has a lot of irregularities depending on the tense (e.g. “go”/”went”), for example – and you just come up with new words when you name new things. This might sound odd to you right now ^{(because what else would you do)}, but my confusion will make more sense once you read through the German bit and our compound words.

Basically, the hard part for me was learning words by heart, not rules. And still is. I do have, by now, a good feeling about what’s possible in terms of syntax – but I feel like learning new words is a never ending cycle. The reason that the ceiling is so high when it comes to how beautifully you can speak this language. I never realised how basic my level was until I tried to read a book in English. It’s like I never learned anything in the first place – but I did understand the basic framework.

The bit about German

German grammar is a battlefield. Probably not as bad as other languages, once again, only based on my knowledge – but I think it’s pretty high up there. Our syntax is wild. We can basically make almost any word order work, if we apply certain rules and follow the guideline of our grammatical cases. What are those, you might ask? Well, they are modifiers for our nouns that help us determine their grammatical purpose in the sentence – and we apply them with suffixes and/or articles. And boy do we have lots of articles.

They are incredibly cumbersome to learn, even as a native speaker – but they are awesome. Having these in place means that we always and instinctively know, what the purpose of the sentence is; there is hardly ever any obscurity. And it’s the reason we can Bob-the-builder our sentences. And I really mean it when I say that. We even split a word to put one half at the beginning and one half at the end of a sentence. It’s wild.

Of course we do have a lot of words as well – you can’t learn a new language without learning vocabularies. But we’ve got less – and that’s because we use compound words. But what are those? They are the reason that Germans have so many long words: You take a noun, you take another noun, and you slap them together. If you’re feeling funky, take another one. Aaaand another one. Maybe a fifth? Of course, go wild!

We like to describe things as we see them; we’re a simple folk. And we do this by using words we already know. We don’t come up with a new, complicated word like it is custom in English – we just, well, do things quite literally. I’m going to do another post with some great examples, but here are a couple to understand what I mean: a fridge? Ah, that’s a cooling cupboard – a “Kühlschrank”, compound of “Kühl” (to cool) and “Schrank” (cupboard). Hospital? Sure, that’s a “Krankenhaus” – a sick person’s house, of course (“Krank” (sick) + “Haus” (house)). The toilet paper holder in a hospital? Ah, yes, the “Krankenhaustoilettenpapierhalter” (“Krank” (sick) + “Haus” (house) + “Toilette” (toilet) + “Papier” (paper) + “Halter” (holder)). Now, you won’t find this word in the dictionary, but I promise you that every single German will just shrug and accept that word.

The best advice I can give you, if you’re learning German, is to just follow this pattern – and chances are incredibly high that you’re either using the correct word from the get-go, or that we’ll understand you perfectly fine regardless.

And how does this help?

I encourage everyone who wants to learn German to do it. It’s an incredibly beautiful language and I love the infinite possibilities you can express yourself in it. After all, there’s a reason we call ourselves the “country of poets and thinkers” – and I do firmly believe that an eloquent German has more to offer than an eloquent Englishman. That’s not to say that I think you can’t express yourself well in it. In fact, the longer I live here, the more I find myself struggling with perfectly translating emotions or thoughts in both languages. Sometimes, it’s easier and better translated to say it in English – and sometimes in German. It’s odd.

If you’re looking to learn German, by the way, I can only recommend Babbel. It does a fantastic job in teaching grammar, something that apps such as Duolingo don’t do, as they are focussing more on learning words. I think ultimately, a combination of both is great.

As for me, I try to further develop my active vocabulary by using old-school flashcards. Well, kind of old-school – I am using an app for it. But it’s the same principle, as learning by repetition is the way forward. The last word I learned this way? Wistful. Beautiful, that!

[Picture by Amador Loureiro – thank you!]