Is German difficult to learn?

[sockrage]

DD is going to a new school in Sept. The other option she has to chose from are geography which she hates and therefore puts no effort into and German which she has never studied but is very strong in languages.

Looking for advice

If she likes languages she will do well, especially if you can visit Germany while she is studying. If she dislikes Geography she might as well try something new.

it all depends on the teacher.

In my experience, it's often kids who are god at maths and physics who find German the easier MFL, as it's quite logical, lots of rules you can simply learn and then apply.

But as with any language, it is all about how good the teacher is. Look what grades kids are getting for German at GCSE at the school.

PS the common consensus is that German is hard, but I found it easier than any other language I did with the exception of Dutch.

All MFL require the rules to be learnt and applied so she will need to put effort into that. My DD did not do German but friends who did found it OK but you just have to work at it.

I pick up languages very easily and have always found it harder than Romance languages like French/Spanish/Italian, but I think that's just the way my brain is wired. (Also, I far prefer speaking and reading Romance languages, for some reason.) But both my sisters took German at school and found it far easier and grammatically logical than French.

if she's not intimidated by learning languages - which is great - I'd go with German.

I found German much easier than French, it is closer to the English language I believe.

The grammar is more complicated than French imo:e.g.

• 3 genders
• 4 cases
• 2 subjunctives
• more to learn with verbs e'g 2nd person singular informal, formal, 2nd person plural formal and informal However, it's all completely logical and rule based -just pay attention to the rules from the beginning and you won't have a problem. It is easier if you understand how English grammar works.

I hated German lessons with a passion but found it very easy to learn.

I did German at GCSE, A level and at uni and I found it so much more logical than French. I'm not saying it was easier but certainly a lot more straightforward to grasp. The pronunciation is far easier too, you just say it as it's written generally, apart from a few accents.

IF you have a Maths brain, German is easier. It's like speaking in a mathematical equation. A lot of the basic vocab is similar, too, but if you're not a grammar person, French is easier because it flows more like English and has fewer rules but more irregularities to remember . More complicated vocab is like French but pronunciation is less straightforward and harder to understand

My German teacher was always saying the maths/science thing to me, but I always found it much harder than French. (Or Latin.)

It's not particularly difficult and while the number of genders/ cases can sound intimidating, they often correlate with English more easily than French IMO.

I found it relatively easy but it's a logical language which suits me & I learnt Latin at prep school which definitely made the grammar easier.
If she hates geography then that's a good reason not to do it but I started German in year 8 so to pick it up from scratch in yr 10 might be more of a challenge

If she's good at languages she should be fine.

What year group will she be in? Year 10 will be much harder to catch up potentially 3 years worth of missed lessons and straight into exam pressure etc. Whereas if she'll be Year 9 or younger then it will be much easier.

German is more difficult at the very beginning trying to say simple things, but then gets much easier - with only 3 tense forms you don't have that big leap to A-level that French students have with loads of new tenses.

For GCSE if she already understands what clauses and verbs and nouns are, it should be fine - only 3 cases and 2 tenses are really needed, plus a few set phrases with subjunctives. Adjective endings are a pain to learn but half of them are n and you can mumble them in speech...

With German it really is a matter of learning the rules and applying them - if grammar is taught well from the ground up, someone with a maths brain will do really well with German. I always liked the relentless logic of it - I'm Dutch, and Dutch is like German with all the logic removed.

I have a language brain, though - did French and German at A-level equivalent (and Dutch and English too, both compulsory).

Will they let her do German ab initio?

Given that your daughter hates geography, isn't German the obvious choice? Does it matter if it's difficult?

German is a great language to learn - it's a very employable skill (realise she is potentially just starting at year 7 level, but still). I found it much easier than French. The rules are more systematic and there are less exceptions. There is also a very clear and systematic relationship between spelling and pronunciation. There are also many similar words to English, although probably not as many as in, for example, Spanish. If you were talking Finnish or Hungarian, fair enough, they're difficult languages, but German - nah, it's fine.

If your dd is good at grammar than german will be easier. The words are more distinct than for example french which makes the listening aspect easier than French