Is German hard to learn?

Difficulty depends on how different a language is from your own. For a native English speaker, German falls in the moderate band, which follows the US Foreign Service Institute's groupings of 24-30, 36, 44 and 88 weeks of full-time class. Languages the Institute does not rank are placed beside their closest relatives, so treat this as an estimate.

Pronunciation is fairly regular and many words are close to English. Cases, genders and verb position are the real work, and they are easier to absorb as whole sentences than as rules.

Languages in the same band include Indonesian, Malay, Swahili.

• German uses the Latin alphabet, so you can read and sound out words from day one.
• Motivation. A trip, a partner, a job or a show you love will carry you further than a small difference in difficulty.
• Speaking from day one. Sentences you say out loud stick far better than words you only read.
• Short daily practice. Consistency beats intensity.

In German the verb sits in second place in a simple sentence and jumps to the end of many others. Building sentences from a word bank, then saying them aloud, makes that pattern automatic instead of something you work out each time.

Go deeper with most common German words, useful German phrases, and German verb conjugations.