German Hard

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German Hard
Home Languages German Is German hard to learn? An honest guide
Anna is one of Busuu’s German Language Experts. She is from Potsdam in Germany where she studied German Linguistics and Sociology. She loves writing short stories and anything related to art and design. Her favourite food is cheese!
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While German might not make the list of the easiest languages to learn , it isn’t one of the top ten most difficult ones either.
If you’re looking for a quick answer to whether learning German really is as hard as you’ve heard – the answer is yes and no.
We’ve considered some of the main reasons why people find German challenging and a few facts that might change your mind.
Read on to learn why learning German might not be as difficult as you think.
Learning a new language can be challenging.
Especially when we try to learn them in a fast-paced world, maybe before or after work, or even in-between other tasks.
German, with its endless amount of pronouns , specific vocab and unfamiliarly harsh pronunciation to memorise, doesn’t exactly sound as fun as a holiday at the beach.
But, if you already speak English, maybe this does:
That’s nearly half of all the words you could ever learn!
Secondly, English and German stem from the same language family, so approximately 80% of common English phrases are of German origin as well.
I have vs. Ich habe; or What is that? vs. Was ist das?
Well, maybe don’t start with “ Aufmerksamkeitsdefizit-Hyperaktivitätsstörung” (ADHD), the longest word in the German dictionary.
The trick to mastering longer words is looking at the words they’re made up of.
In English, we often use a space or a hyphen between the two parts that make up a word.
In German, we usually spell all parts together.
This also means that combining two German words together to make one up often works.
Guess what: German pronunciation being difficult is also more on the fake-news side of things.
In fact, German is one of the few languages where pronunciation makes sense.
Each letter or letter combination usually always sounds the same, no matter where in a word it stands.
Unlike English, where letters constantly change their sounds: just think of vase, case and brass .
So once you’ve got the patterns down, sounding out a word in German is easier than you might think!
German grammar is complex, can get frustrating at times, and will probably take a while to master.
Most learners struggle with grammatical cases (to be fair, they can be a pain even for native speakers).
But once you’ve understood how useful they are, you’ll see why it’s worth the work.
Cases help us be very precise and definitive when it comes to who does or receives the action in a sentence, for example.
Ultimately, this makes our communication clearer and more efficient.
On the bright side, understanding English grammar can be extremely beneficial to understanding German grammar.
And remember: lots of English and German phrases have the same stem, so the word order will feel familiar.
So don’t worry if you don’t always get the cases perfectly right every time.
People will still understand you, and that’s the main goal in the beginning, isn’t it?
With plenty of straightforward rules, German is not actually as hard to learn as most people think.
And since English and German stem from the same language family, you might actually be surprised at the things you pick up without even trying!
And on top of it all, it’s definitely a useful one, too.
With about 130 million speakers, German is the 11th most spoken language in the world.
Check out our tips to improve your German , or start learning for free with Busuu today.

Language 10 Difficult German Words and How to Pronounce Them
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Here are our top 10 hardest German words and how to pronounce them!
The German language has a reputation for being quite aggressive and having words that are hard to pronounce. However, the language is also home to some beautiful German words , expressing concepts that don’t exist in the English language.
Compound nouns are a trademark of the German language. While the length of a word isn’t necessarily proportional to its difficulty, the sheer number of letters is enough to terrify the most advanced language learner. Throw some funny-looking letters (and sounds) in there too and you've got a recipe for a pretty hard language to pronounce.
Also a difficult one in English, this is a classic when it comes to difficult German words to pronounce.
If you want to complicate it even further, adding ‘chen’ to the end of it and an umlaut to the ‘a’ (ä) turns the meaning into a small box of matches: Streichholzschächtelchen (though it looks like it should mean so much more.)
Another compound noun classic in the German language. Breaking this word up, you’ve “Freundschaft” meaning friendship and “Beziehungen” meaning relations. Sometimes we love the logic of German!
Every time we try to pronounce this one, it comes out as a strange sound rather than an actual word. The German ‘r’ at the beginning of the word followed by ‘ü’ is what makes this one hard to pronounce. We are still practicing…
Another brilliant logical compound noun here! Once you break it up into individual parts, it’s actually not that bad. The hard part comes when you try saying it all together as one word. Who knew a single word could be a tongue twister?
What’s more daunting than going for an x-ray? Some would say trying to pronounce the German word for an x-ray. In this case, you can blame Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, the doctor who patented the procedure in the late 19th century. To honor his medical contribution, his name landed into the German dictionary as both a verb and a noun.
To help pronounce this one, remember that ‘qu’ is more of a ‘kv’ sound. With that, the breakdown would be “Quietsche” + “ent-chen.” Once you get the hang of it, it’s actually not that bad!
Three consonants in a row is never a good sign, nevermind it being at the beginning of the word! cue facepalm
This is one you definitely want to break up to help pronounce it more easily: Kreuz - schlitz - schrauben - zieher.
The tricky part of this German word is to not also pronounce “schuh” with an ‘l’ in there. Once you pronounce “schlitt” and “schuh” together over and over, you’ve already gotten the hang of this word!
Admittedly, German words look very scary and hard to pronounce because we write them all together. However, the main tip for mastering those compound nouns is to break them up into its component parts. Take each part slowly and then when you’ve got the hang of it, pronounce them all together. Once you’ve mastered them, put them into practice by speaking to a native speaker:
That’s exactly where the Tandem app comes in. With Tandem, it’s easy to find German language exchange partners to chat with. Whether that’s through video or audio calls, voice messages or texting, Tandem supports your individual learning style. With millions of members in the online community, you’re bound to find someone with similar interests to you, ensuring your language learning remains fun and motivating. Download now !
If you want to find out more about the German language, be sure to check out our article on learning German online .
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By Julia Lewman / Learn German / January 21, 2019


2 thoughts on “Is German Hard to Learn? Nope, And Here’s Why”

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During our last trip to Germany over the holidays of 2018, we drove through a small town in southwestern Germany called “ Kuchen ” during one of our day trips.
This prompted the following conversation between me and my husband:
Him (confused): “Why would a town be named after the German word for kitchen ?
Me: “Actually, Kuchen means “cake”… The word for kitchen is “Küche”.
Him: “But wait … I thought “Küche” means “to cook”?
What followed were a series of eye rolls and snide remarks of how German is completely illogical and that all of these words practically sound the same.
(Side note: for me, as a native German speaker, they definitely don’t.)
But the more I thought about these three words ( Kuchen , Küche , and kochen ), the more I could see why German at times tends to be so difficult for those learning it for the first time.a
While I perceive German grammar as something mildly unpleasant and downright confusing even from the perspective of a native speaker, I personally never thought that German as a language was particularly hard to learn (that was, until I got married to an American who has been trying to learn German on and off for the last five years).
Today I know that this stance mainly stemmed from the fact that I already knew how to speak German. But how hard is it really to learn the German language?
It entirely depends on your attitude when it comes to taking the first steps to learn German — namely in this case: not letting yourself be put off by a myriad of different articles and seemingly never-ending compound words.
Especially the latter have given the German language a reputation for being difficult. And to be honest, words like Nahrungsmittelunverträglichkeit (which neither is the longest compound word nor one that’s rarely used) do not help the case here.
But before I divert into common clichés about the German language, let’s take a closer look at the facts. Is German really that hard to learn?
If you are a native English speaker and you have a knack for etymology (which is the study of the origin of words) you will find that a lot of German and English words might be surprisingly similar.
The reason for this is quite simple: Both German and English share the same origin — they are Indo-European languages stemming from the same Germanic language family.
While the origins undoubtedly date far back and both languages have undergone a transformation over the centuries, about 40% of German and English vocabulary is still quite similar. So if you are a native English speaker, you might profit from these similarities.
The good news is that these examples of the vocabulary of different languages sounding alike (so-called “ cognates ”) also exist for many other languages in the Indo-European language family, such as Dutch, French, Spanish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, just to name a few.
The other good news about German is that despite the grammar looking quite difficult at first, German grammatical patterns are actually way more straightforward and easy than you might think — provided you stay on top and study diligently. But once you have them figured out, they are pretty much the same and you can simply apply what you have previously learned to new linguistic situations.
And once you have the pronunciation down, German words are pretty much pronounced the same way — unlike English, where “ naked ” and “ baked ” are spelled (more or less) the same way, but pronounced completely differently.
But even if you are not a native English speaker, you can still profit from the similarities between English and German if you’re fluent in English. These can be exceptionally helpful when learning German to building memory hooks and make it a bit easier on yourself.
Let’s have a look at some of these examples:
Some very basic expressions are quite similar in both German and English. These include:
“ Was ist das? ” — “ What is that? ”
Notice here how both the vocabulary and the sentence structure itself is pretty much the same. The main difference here is the difference in pronunciation: throughout etymological history, the sounds of these words have shifted in the respective language.
In this case, while the German word for “I” has shifted quite a bit, the word “ haben ” bears great similarity to the English equivalent “ to have ”.
Words and comparatives are sometimes very much alike, such as in the case of the German word “ gut ” ( good ):
The main difference here, aside from a few etymological shifts, is the use of the different articles in the German language.
When learning certain vocabulary, you will notice that over time, only certain letters in a word have been changed and/or added. This is the case with:
How can you memorize these words (and their equivalents) best? By simply reminding yourself that oftentimes the English equivalent of a German term or word can be created by changing letters (or letter combinations) such as pf , ff , or f into a p : such as the word “Pfeffer”, where pf — becomes p and the doubled f simply morphs into a doubled p .
This also happens in the case of other words, such as:
In cases of words like “ Wasser ” and “ Glitzer ”, letter combinations such as ss and tz are oftentimes replaced with t or a doubled t ( tt ).
While the above rules obviously aren’t always applicable, they might be able to give you at least a little bit of help in certain situations on your journey to fluency in German.
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Another snippet of wisdom I’ve learned throughout living with someone trying to learn German is that English allows for way more leeway when it comes to mispronouncing words.
Even if you (slightly) mispronounce an English word, generally speaking, the person you are talking to might still be able to understand you — whether it’s through analyzing the context of the sentence or because even when a word is mispronounced in English, it’s in some cases still very recognizable.
This, however, is oftentimes not possible in German. If you mispronounce a German word, a lot of times this will, unfortunately, earn you blank stares.
There is one advantage that German does have over the English language though — it is much easier to pronounce phonetically .
And I will admit this: Pronouncing German — especially pronouncing those ridiculously long compound words — sometimes just makes you want to pull your hair out. So my advice if you are struggling with pronouncing German words: Baby steps!
Start by learning the phonetic pronunciation of the German alphabet first, and try to master each letter (especially those pesky Umlauts ) before trying to tackle words like:
“ Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaft ”
( Insurance company providing legal protection . I am not making this up, I promise!)
Once you have practiced the pronunciation of each German letter, it’s going to be much easier to pronounce actual words.
You will find a myriad of online resources how to pronounce each letter — I highly recommend you do so by watching YouTube videos where you can hear German native speakers talk. This one here is an excellent example:
I know especially when beginning to learn a language having to start at the absolute basics can be extremely frustrating — it is like starting out at the level of a toddler, after all.
But no matter how ridiculous you might feel uttering “ aaaah ” and “ tseeeh ” in front of your laptop, you will soon experience the benefits of this “training” when tackling actual German words.
All well and good , you might think now — but what about certain phonetic sounds that don’t even exist in the English language, such as Umlauts and the “ ch ”-sound (such as in the word Chemie — chemistry )?
I’ve tried to come up with the closest examples of the English language that might make pronouncing those a little bit easier.
Ä/ä — Is pronounced similarly to the “ e ” in the English word “ telling ”, with the difference that the emphasis on said “e” is stretched a bit longer.
Ö/ö — Sounds somewhat alike to the “ i ” in the English word “ girl ”. Same as with “ä” the vowel also is a little more stretched.
Ü/ü — Most closely resembles the double-“ o ” in the English word “ mood ”, although in this case I highly recommend listening to the pronunciation by an actual native speaker, since there are still minor differences.
As for the throaty, hissing “ ch ”-sound, I have noticed that for many English speakers this sound is extremely hard to emulate. If you are a cat owner, however (or know someone who has cats), the sound most closely resembling the German “ ch ” is that of a cat definitely wanting to be left alone .
And although in most instances, the “ ch ” sounds like what I describe as the “angry cat noise”, there are a few words where “ ch ” is pronounced like a soft “ k ”:
The most important thing when trying to get a feel for German pronunciation is to practice, practice, practice.
While this might be tedious at first, I am sure that with enough repetition, you’ll have the German pronunciation down in no time!
God only knows how we came up with the determination that “ der Berg ” ( the mountain ) is masculine and a cat that you see in passing is feminine by default (“ die Katze ”), while a dog is male (“ der Hund ”).
Most irritating (and borderline insulting) though is the fact that a female child is neuter:
While most Germans are able to either laugh about this or just simply shrug it off, it’s not that easy for those trying to learn German. You have my deepest sympathies — no one deserves having to go through learning an array of different articles defining a word’s gender (… that might not even correspond to the subject’s actual gender, mind you: see the girl above).
There is unfortunately also not much help I can offer in this case, except for that knowing these articles all comes down to essentially learning them by heart.
So when studying, always make sure you are including the article on your vocabulary flash cards — and try not to overthink certain cases.
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Without wanting to go into too much detail about the four different German cases (mainly to avoid information overload), I feel I should give a disclaimer here.
The German case system is not necessarily the easiest and you will have to be diligent in your studying when it comes to the four cases:
These four cases decide how a word changes when used in a certain case, e.g. in the accusative.
However, if you well versed with English grammar, you might not realize that you are already using some of the cases without necessarily noticing it.
Sentences such as “ He gave her the book ” already indicate that an accusative case is used here (you’re not saying “ He gave she the book ”, after all).
So the good news first: The normative and accusative case is kind of already used in English, and both cases are pretty much the same in German.
The only difference is that German has two more additional cases: The dative (indicating an indirect object) as well as the genitive , which i
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