German is normally a hard language to master as you might have heard: because of the grammar.
Depending on your background, this might be easier or harder:
If your mother tongue is of Asian origin (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) and you make no difference between "a cat" and "the cat", then the fact that "the" and "a" in German each have around 3 forms depending on the usage/case (dem, der, den / einem, einer, einen)
(..and that happens for each of the 3 genders (neuter, masc, fem) )
..this fact might prove to be more of a challenge for you than for someone that is used to conjugations in his language.
If your language is a Romance language (except French maybe), then the reading part will prove to be very easy. Pronunciation is quite easy in German; that won't be your problem. Most letters are read as they are written, some exceptions apply for certain groups of letters - however! - once they have a reading rule it always applies so no headache there.
I think this applies for Slavic languages as well (right?).
If you have a Dutch/English background, many words will sound similar; and you'll think: "Oh, wait a minuuute now, I know that word!"
E.g.:
I want to swim
Ich will schwimmen
or:
Gute Nacht
Good night
(sounds familiar, right?)
And the 3 verbal forms from English - so similar in German!
see - saw - seen
sehen - sah - gesehen
to sing - sang - sung
singen - sang - gesungen
proves my point, right? :)
The good news is there are a lot of movies to watch in German (mostly about Jews and Hitler and war, but still); the German TV channels usually have all shows in German (they even show American movies in German, yes! ). pro7, sat1, rtl, rtl2 - you can also find them online
(e.g. : www.rtl.de )
There are a lot of German musicians that you can listen to: Bushido, Rammstein, Ich und Ich, Revolverheld, Silbermond, Söhne Mannheims, Juli
are just a few of my personal favorites.
So there are a LOT of resources out there on the internet to help you, which is absolutely great and will help you like nothing else!
The bad news is that as a German speaker I found it hard to find people with whom I can talk in German in the USA and there is no Goethe-Institut in my city either - although if you live in SF or NY that might not be a problem for you.
So if you have a Goethe-Institut in your city: cherish it deeply!
To resume everything:
The Good:
- lots of movies in German
- great music in German
- many words similar to English
- easy pronunciation
The Bad
- articles are a killer, prepositions, etc.
- grammar is a pain
The Ugly
- sometimes it's hard to find German speakers
- at times there are no centers for German language learning
Now ..that it is one of the hardest languages to learn.. that is quite arguable.. I've tried to tackle Mandarin, Arabic, saw a bit of Hebrew, Korean..
I'd say it's a harder language to master as in speak correctly, but as they say in German :
"Übung macht den Meister"
And if you need motivation, just think Oktoberfest:
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