What makes German the hardest Germanic language to learn?

 

Steven Haddock

TESL course graduate

Well, you’re right and everyone else who answered to say “German’s not hard” is wrong because you quite properly noted that its the rating on the Foreign Service Institute’s list. This is the agency that teaches U.S. government employees new languages for their assignments.

A Category I language isn’t terribly hard - it probably has a lot of characteristics similar to English. For example, German still uses the Roman alphabet, so that’s a plus. It also has a lot of cognates - words that are similar to English words and mean the same thing.

However, when you look at the list, “Dutch” and “Afrikaans” are on the easier side, while German is right up there with Spanish, which is a Romance language with no direct link to English. So what gives?

Well, German and English started to drift apart in the 12th century when English stopped creating new words out of existing words (compounding) and started borrowing words from Norman French.

Next, English dropped word endings for noun cases and used syntax of Subject-Verb-Object. German went with the syntax Subject-Object-Verb. By comparison, most European languages went Subject-Verb-Object too - German is the outlier.

Then German has an unusually high number of articles (usually indicating gender, but also case) that don’t exist in English or even French.

And then there are prepositions. English and French have some outlying prepositions (in a car, on a plane) but in German prepositions kind of come at you randomly.

So let’s do some comparisons

English: Good evening. How are you? Have you spent much time here in New York City? It’s been a pleasure to meet you.

Dutch: Goedenavond. Hoe is het met je? Heb je veel tijd hier in New York City doorgebracht? Het was een genoegen u te ontmoeten. [Okay, not too bad - “spent” comes at the end of the sentence, but otherwise everything is pretty much the same despite SOV order)

French: Bonsoir. Comment ca va? Avez-vous passé beaucoup de temps ici à New York? Ce fut un plaisir de vous rencontrer. [Grammar is pretty much the same, vocabulary is quite different, but manageable]

German: Guten Abend. Wie geht es dir? Haben Sie viel Zeit hier in New York City verbracht? Es war mir eine Freude, Sie kennenzulernen.

Here, we can see German has fewer cognates than Dutch (“Abend” not “avond”, “geht” not “hoe”). Then we run into “you”, which in German gives you three choices depending on how formal you want to be. “Sie” is one of the more formal ones, but as you can see the Dutch are more familiar, using “je” which is more of a cognate. Then there’s “meet you” which in Dutch is “ontmoeten” but in German is “kennenzulernen”.

What is the relationship between the German language and the English language?

 

Steven Haddock

Compliance Officer

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Old English, the form of English spoken in England in the 6th century to the 11th century, was almost entirely based on forms of German spoken on the northwest coast of Germany during the same period. English borrows almost no words from the languages that must have been spoken in the region by the native population (which were closer to modern Welsh)

German and English started to diverge in the 6th century as different groups of people started also invading the territory, like the Danes and the Vikings, which brought other words into English.

But the big split was in the 11th century when the Normans conquered England and ruled over it for over 400 years. The Norman kings and aristocrats only spoke French but allowed the natives to keep speaking their own language. However, from that point forward German and English diverged greatly as instead of using compounding to form new words, English instead borrowed Norman words. Although in 1066 German and English shared a lot of vocabulary, by the 16th century they only shared very basic vocabulary and more complex vocabulary was Norman French borrowed words in English but compound German words in German.

Of the 5,000 most common words in English, about 95% of them have a German root, and many are still German cognates, like “Hound” and “Flesh” (“Hund” and “Fleisch” respectively).

How do the word orders of English, French, and German differ?

 

Steven Haddock

Compliance Officer

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English and French are largely “Subject-Verb-Object” languages, where the position of the nouns shows their grammatical sense. “I love Hockey!”

However, if you use a pronoun in French as the object of a sentence, its position switches to before the verb, so it becomes “Subject-Object-Verb”. “I it love”

German is largely “Subject-Object-Verb”. Technically, this means the verb can be the last word in a very long sentence. However, in most cases, German speakers will move the verb to a more convenient point and break up a long sentence into pieces. “I football love”

Adjectives

In English, adjectives almost always go in front of the noun. There is a particular order depending on the nature of the adjective if there’s more than one - e.g. “big blue ball” not “blue big ball”.

German, like English, puts adjectives before the noun they modify.

In French, adjectives can go both before the noun and after, depending on their function, e.g. “big house blue” not “big blue house” or “house big blue”.

Is German a more efficient language than English?

 

Steven Haddock

Compliance Officer

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Slightly.

Efficiency is largely a measure of how many words you need to communicate ideas. Some languages are better at this than others. English isn’t actually that bad compared to a language like French.

English - I am going shopping today because I need some butter.

French - Je vais faire du shopping aujourd'hui parce que j'ai besoin de beurre. (In English - I am going for shopping on the day that is today for the cause that I need the butter)

German doesn’t use helper verbs like English and instead incorporates tense, which makes it a bit shorter

German - Ich gehe heute einkaufen, weil ich etwas Butter brauche.

Save one entire word. That’s typical of how German can be briefer than English.

Does German have English words?

 

Steven Haddock

Compliance Officer

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Insufferable know-it-all, mostly law, science, politics and Canadian football.

In one of the strangest examples of linguistic divergence in history, English, which is based on old German, has pretty much completely diverged from German to the point where only basic vocabulary terms are shared. Although most of the most common 5,000 English words are based on old German (including Mouse, House and Hound), when you get to vocabulary that developed after about 1100 C.E., the two vocabularies diverge wildly.

That’s largely because German and other languages based on it (the Scandinavian ones) form new words by compounding - taking existing words and stitching them together.

Swine + Flesh = Swineflesh

But English stopped doing that for new words and started introducing French words into its vocabulary

Old French Porc = Middle English Pork.

Well into the 20th century, this trend continued

Collar + Bone = Collarbone (German)

Latin Clavicle = Modern English Clavicle.

But this made many German words unwieldy.

Stroke + Screw = Strokescrew (German)

Greek Spiral + Wing = English Helicopter

Nature + Shaft = Natureshaft (German)

Latin Knowledge = English Science

As such, German has replaced some of its vocabulary with English where it’s easier (like “telephon”). However, it’s rare and rather scattershot. There might be just over a hundred English words that have been commonly incorporated into the language. Unfortunately, they don’t always mean the same thing:

HANDY - English adjective meaning “convenient”. German uses it as a noun for a mobile phone (i.e. like “cell” or “mobile”)

OLDTIMER - English for “elderly person”. German for “Classic Automobile”.

SMOKING - English for “using cigarette, cigar or pipe”. German for “Dinner Jacket” or “Tuxedo”. In English, a “Smoking Jacket” is quite different - a thick jacket designed to keep smoke off your clothes.

BODYBAG - English for a bag used to store dead bodies. In German, it’s a large messenger bag that’s slung over the shoulder with a single strap.

SHOOTINGSTAR - Informal English for “meteor”. German for “suddenly famous person”.

PUBLIC VIEWING - English for “private property that is available for public display, such as a house for sale”. In German it’s “large television screen in a public place.