On the whole, I think there are two things that make German somewhat harder for English speakers: the grammar and the phonological changes.
When learning German, while I considered the language comparatively easy compared to other languages I’d learned at the time, the grammar was rather complex. There’s the gender aspect, which other languages do share, but with German there are fewer immediately recognizable patterns to English speakers. For instance, “Mädchen” (girl) was neuter instead of feminine. While the “-chen” ending indicates a neuter gender, one who is just learning might assume that since the word means “girl,” it must be feminine. English still technically has gender, but it primarily manifests as a sex-gender/natural gender system in pronouns. So, there is the distinction between he/she/it rather than only one word. Other Germanic languages have gender, but usually not as complex and as involved as with German.
Above: Gender in European languages. Light blue: no grammatical gender, or no gender system at all. Yellow: common/neuter. Green: animate/inanimate. Red: masculine/feminine. Dark blue: masculine/feminine/neuter.
(Update) Above: Map distinguishing European languages by use of grammatical genders and gendered pronouns.
Also, there was no set plural form in German.
Again, this is true of many other languages, like how with English there’s the most common “-s/es” ending, but there’s also sometimes “-en,” like in “brethren,” “oxen,” “children,” etc, irregular ones like “geese,” or sometimes no plural marker just to name a few. However, in English, one doesn’t have to learn too many plural markers, since “-s/-es” is just so common (like >90%). Not so with German.
German had all kinds of plural markers like:
- -e in Flugzeuge (airplanes)
- -er + umlaut in Bücher (books)
- -e + umlaut in Bäume (trees)
- just a simple umlaut in Mütter (mothers)
- -en/n in Katzen
- no marker, like in Finger (finger or fingers)
- -s like in Handys (cellphones)
Most foreign words would end in s, so it would be a bit easier to guess that. Otherwise, the “-e” ending was the most common in my experience. But, even though it was the most common, it was only about 40–50% of the times I would see that at the most.
Bear in mind that all the words I listed above have cognates in English, especially if you break down the words, so understanding the word was no problem. It’s just that when you see how many forms the word can take, it gets harder to wrap your head around it all.
Now German and English have thousands of cognates, often very obvious ones, but due the High German Consonant Shift, the similarities can sometimes be obscured.
- “t” became “ts”or “s”
- → “toe” = “Zehe”; “tooth” = “Zahn”
- “p” became “pf” or “f”
- → “ship” = “Schiff”; “weapon” = “Waffe”
- “d” became “t”
- →”day” = “Tag”
- “v” corresponds to “b”
- “love” = “Liebe”; “live” = “Leben”
Now, it may seem like a petty difference to pay attention to, but when comparing an English word to, say, a Dutch cognate, which usually lacks those phonological changes, the Dutch cognate is usually more recognizable. When taking into account that there are more shared cognates between English and Dutch, the intelligebaility is raised. For example:
- All you do is eat, sleep, and drink.
- Alles, was Sie tun, ist essen, schlafen und trinken. (German)
- Alles wat je doet is eten, slapen en drinken. (Dutch)
English has had phonological changes in consonants as well, but not to the same extent as German. As for the North Germanic languages, their ancestor Old Norse influenced English somewhat, so the there are some shared grammatical, phonological, and lexical features that are just not shared with German. For instance, English lacks the V2 word order, so the verb that follows the auxiliary doesn’t go the end of the sentence.
- I can help you.
- ich kann Ihnen helfen. = I can (aux) you help. (German)
- jag kan hjälpa dig. = I can (aux) help you. (Swedish)
Shared Vocabulary from Old Norse Influence
- They are both weak
- Every word here came either from Old Norse or was influenced by it
- Sie sind beide schwach (German)
- None are from Old Norse
- De är båda veka/svaga (Swedish)
- Every word is from Old Norse
With these in mind, despite both English and German being West Germanic, German can stand out a bit more to an English speaker despite the great overall similarities.
Edit: It’s been brought to my attention that the first map may give the impression that English utterly lacks gender (grammatical or otherwise). I included the second map to show the distinction. Thank you, Thomas Wier.
