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[ashersky]

You know that weird-shaped s you see in old documents in English, like the Constitution, that looks a bit like an integral sign, or a fancy f with no cross?  Okay, now write a normal lowercase s right next to that.  Now connect their tops with a straight line down.

Now you have the German ss as it was printed in Fraktur style fonts.  It's not a B, it's just another character you have to memorize and is, if I remember correctly, entirely deprecated, no longer used in official documents etc.  It is exactly equivalent to "ss".

I guess.

I'm just arguing that, to me, German seems incredibly difficult as a foreign language as compared to something super simple like Japanese.  I know a lot of non-native English speakers find English difficult -- this is the same as that, I guess.

[Awaclus]

You know that weird-shaped s you see in old documents in English, like the Constitution, that looks a bit like an integral sign, or a fancy f with no cross?  Okay, now write a normal lowercase s right next to that.  Now connect their tops with a straight line down.

Now you have the German ss as it was printed in Fraktur style fonts.  It's not a B, it's just another character you have to memorize and is, if I remember correctly, entirely deprecated, no longer used in official documents etc.  It is exactly equivalent to "ss".

I guess.

I'm just arguing that, to me, German seems incredibly difficult as a foreign language as compared to something super simple like Japanese.  I know a lot of non-native English speakers find English difficult -- this is the same as that, I guess.

You think Japanese is super simple and your main complaint about German is one letter that English doesn't have?

[Watno]

Also, ß never appears at the beginning of a ward. There's also no capital version of it.

[Witherweaver]

I only took two German courses in college (foreign languages are not fun to learn for me), but it seemed extremely simple, given that you knew English.  I took French in high school, and that was also easy to learn (to the extent required for the course---I never became fluent).

Edit: I mean, all languages are easy to learn, if you simply take the effort to learn them.  But I imagine a language that borrows from a lot of different sources (like English) is more challenging. 

[ashersky]

You know that weird-shaped s you see in old documents in English, like the Constitution, that looks a bit like an integral sign, or a fancy f with no cross?  Okay, now write a normal lowercase s right next to that.  Now connect their tops with a straight line down.

Now you have the German ss as it was printed in Fraktur style fonts.  It's not a B, it's just another character you have to memorize and is, if I remember correctly, entirely deprecated, no longer used in official documents etc.  It is exactly equivalent to "ss".

I guess.

I'm just arguing that, to me, German seems incredibly difficult as a foreign language as compared to something super simple like Japanese.  I know a lot of non-native English speakers find English difficult -- this is the same as that, I guess.

You think Japanese is super simple and your main complaint about German is one letter that English doesn't have?

I don't think Japanese is super simple, I know it is.  I speak English, Japanese, and Italian, having learned the second two.  Japanese was the easier to learn, by far.

I am sure I could learn German if I studied.  But just plopping in the middle of it, it's clear to me that it is much harder than the languages I've learned.

If you were to drop a person in the middle or Tokyo or Berlin with no knowledge of either language,  or a related language, the one dropped in Tokyo would have a much easier time picking it up.

[ashersky]

Also, ß never appears at the beginning of a ward. There's also no capital version of it.

Good to know.  Any reason?

[LastFootnote]

I don't think Japanese is super simple, I know it is.  I speak English, Japanese, and Italian, having learned the second two.  Japanese was the easier to learn, by far.

I am sure I could learn German if I studied.  But just plopping in the middle of it, it's clear to me that it is much harder than the languages I've learned.

If you were to drop a person in the middle or Tokyo or Berlin with no knowledge of either language,  or a related language, the one dropped in Tokyo would have a much easier time picking it up.

You are in the minority, dude. Most native English speakers find German way easier than Japanese. They're sister languages, German and English. Several words are the same, and the grammar's way closer.

[ashersky]

I don't think Japanese is super simple, I know it is.  I speak English, Japanese, and Italian, having learned the second two.  Japanese was the easier to learn, by far.

I am sure I could learn German if I studied.  But just plopping in the middle of it, it's clear to me that it is much harder than the languages I've learned.

If you were to drop a person in the middle or Tokyo or Berlin with no knowledge of either language,  or a related language, the one dropped in Tokyo would have a much easier time picking it up.

You are in the minority, dude. Most native English speakers find German way easier than Japanese. They're sister languages, German and English. Several words are the same, and the grammar's way closer.

Maybe?  I'd assume you'd have a hard time proving that unless there's been a study done of language students somewhere of native English speakers who have studied both Japanese and German.

Japanese is easier to pronounce and has simpler and more sensible grammar rules than English (and therefore German, I assume).  The only "hard" part is reading, but that's rote memorization anyway.

Compare that long German word I wrote earlier to something of similar length in Japanese:

kyakushitsujoumuin

I think that is much easier to figure out than the German word, because the phonetics are so simple and consistent.

[Awaclus]

I don't think Japanese is super simple, I know it is.  I speak English, Japanese, and Italian, having learned the second two.  Japanese was the easier to learn, by far.

I am sure I could learn German if I studied.  But just plopping in the middle of it, it's clear to me that it is much harder than the languages I've learned.

If you were to drop a person in the middle or Tokyo or Berlin with no knowledge of either language,  or a related language, the one dropped in Tokyo would have a much easier time picking it up.

Japanese is like the easiest thing ever to pronounce and the grammar is more intuitive than that of German languages a lot of the time, but surely learning thousands of Chinese characters is more difficult than learning one ß.

Compare that long German word I wrote earlier to something of similar length in Japanese:

客室乗務員

FTFY.

[ashersky]

I don't think Japanese is super simple, I know it is.  I speak English, Japanese, and Italian, having learned the second two.  Japanese was the easier to learn, by far.

I am sure I could learn German if I studied.  But just plopping in the middle of it, it's clear to me that it is much harder than the languages I've learned.

If you were to drop a person in the middle or Tokyo or Berlin with no knowledge of either language,  or a related language, the one dropped in Tokyo would have a much easier time picking it up.

Japanese is like the easiest thing ever to pronounce and the grammar is more intuitive than that of German languages a lot of the time, but surely learning thousands of Chinese characters is more difficult than learning one ß.

Compare that long German word I wrote earlier to something of similar length in Japanese:

客室乗務員

FTFY.

Learning thousands of Chinese characters would in fact be very difficult, as well as unfortunate given I was discussing Japanese.

The characters are related, and some are the same, but they are not the same language.

[Awaclus]

Learning thousands of Chinese characters would in fact be very difficult, as well as unfortunate given I was discussing Japanese.

The characters are related, and some are the same, but they are not the same language.

Well, the argument could be made that it's unfortunate that Japanese uses thousands of Chinese characters in its writing system, but I doubt they're going to change that any time soon.

[Teproc]

I don't speak Japanese, but I do speak German and English, and the idea that an English speaker would have an easier time learning Japanese is ludicrous. English is basically an easier to learn version of German (except in the pronounciation field, English pronounciation makes zero sense).

I don't care how complex German grammar is, the simple fact that you basically know half of the vocabulary already has to make it much easier.

[ashersky]

Learning thousands of Chinese characters would in fact be very difficult, as well as unfortunate given I was discussing Japanese.

The characters are related, and some are the same, but they are not the same language.

Well, the argument could be made that it's unfortunate that Japanese uses thousands of Chinese characters in its writing system, but I doubt they're going to change that any time soon.

Relevant: https://eastasiastudent.net/regional/hanzi-and-kanji/

Anyway, if you learn to read Chinese, you still won't be able to speak, or understand, Japanese.

[ashersky]

I don't speak Japanese, but I do speak German and English, and the idea that an English speaker would have an easier time learning Japanese is ludicrous. English is basically an easier to learn version of German (except in the pronounciation field, English pronounciation makes zero sense).

I don't care how complex German grammar is, the simple fact that you basically know half of the vocabulary already has to make it much easier.

I haven't tried to learn German, but I learned both Japanese and Italian fluently, and the latter was exponentially harder to learn, even though Latin languages are supposed to be easier.

We are arguing about a subjective measure of difficulty that is literally different for every brain in the world.  I'm assuming I won't convince you, and you won't convince me.

Have you, or any of you other Japanese haters, tried to learn it?  Maybe you wouldn't be so critical if you gave it a shot.

I cannot say for certain that German is harder to learn, but spending many days within its confines impressed me with its very difficult pronunciation.

[Witherweaver]

There wasn't any criticism.

[scott_pilgrim]

I'm sure it varies from person to person, and I have no idea about how the languages compare overall, but the specific complaint that you made seems pretty ridiculous to me.  Your complaint seems to be that German is phonetically complicated, which maybe it is, I know almost nothing about German.  But my understanding is that there are at least some phonetic rules to go by.  Hiragana and katakana are very straightforward phonetically, but kanji is basically as difficult as a written language could get (I imagine Chinese is harder, but they're in the same ballpark), because the only way to learn it is to memorize thousands of characters.  Even if German had no phonetic rules at all, it would be equally difficult as kanji, because you could just memorize which words correspond with which pronunciations (which is what you have to do with kanji).

[ashersky]

Maybe we are talking past each other.  We are writing on a forum, so writing and reading is required, but I'm talking about speaking out loud -- and German just seems so obviously harder to speak than Japanese.  The way it is written is a visual representation of that when the language is written phonetically -- like when I romanized the Japanese word -- which is what the argument is.  Learning to make the sounds that match their phonetic representations is the thing we are discussing but SP and Awaclus are trying to muddy the waters with kanji.

Sure, it's hard to memorize 1800 or 5000 kanji.  But speaking Japanese is really, really easy.  Memorizing a funny SS might be simple, but speaking German is not.

[Teproc]

The weird thing is that pronounciation is, like, the simplest thing about the German language. Of the languages I know, the difficulty in pronouncing goes this way (left = hard)

English >>>>>>> French >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>German

And this isn't that subjective. German is simple to pronouncebecause it has clear rules and mostly holds to it. As opposed to English wich has basically no rules, and you have to learn how to pronounce every single word. French is somewhere in between : there are rules, but there are many, many of them, and they're not as universally true as the ones in German.

The word you highlighted above is actually very simple to pronounce, and, as someone pointed out, much easier than the word you negatively happened to us to describe it (straightforward).

Now Japanese seems pretty easy to pronounce as well, I'll give you that.But in the grand schme of things, German is very much on the easy side.

[Witherweaver]

Maybe we are talking past each other.  We are writing on a forum, so writing and reading is required, but I'm talking about speaking out loud -- and German just seems so obviously harder to speak than Japanese.  The way it is written is a visual representation of that when the language is written phonetically -- like when I romanized the Japanese word -- which is what the argument is.  Learning to make the sounds that match their phonetic representations is the thing we are discussing but SP and Awaclus are trying to muddy the waters with kanji.

Sure, it's hard to memorize 1800 or 5000 kanji.  But speaking Japanese is really, really easy.  Memorizing a funny SS might be simple, but speaking German is not.

It sounds like you're saying that, if you spell things phonetically, then they're easier to pronounce from their spelling. 

[IsotropicWasBetter]

A new random stuff thread? I noticed we got up to random stuff V in titles, why stop there?

Why indeed?

I think this may be getting out of hand.

This post is discriminatory to those without hands.

[ashersky]

The weird thing is that pronounciation is, like, the simplest thing about the German language. Of the languages I know, the difficulty in pronouncing goes this way (left = hard)

English >>>>>>> French >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>German

And this isn't that subjective. German is simple to pronouncebecause it has clear rules and mostly holds to it. As opposed to English wich has basically no rules, and you have to learn how to pronounce every single word. French is somewhere in between : there are rules, but there are many, many of them, and they're not as universally true as the ones in German.

The word you highlighted above is actually very simple to pronounce, and, as someone pointed out, much easier than the word you negatively happened to us to describe it (straightforward).

Now Japanese seems pretty easy to pronounce as well, I'll give you that.But in the grand schme of things, German is very much on the easy side.

I can't defend English here -- I know full well it's a mess.  I think French is very hard to pronounce, given what seems to me to be a lot of extra letter that serve no purpose in most words.

When Germans speak German, I can't mimic the sounds they make.  Have you heard an American say Goethe?  When Germans say it, it sounds kind of like Gurkha?  I still can't pronounce the guy's name.

But we can all say Murakami without a problem.

My rankings, then, would go:

Tonal languages such as Vietnamese and Chinese >>> French >>> German >>> English >>> Portuguese >>> Spanish >>> Italian >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Japanese.

[ashersky]

Maybe we are talking past each other.  We are writing on a forum, so writing and reading is required, but I'm talking about speaking out loud -- and German just seems so obviously harder to speak than Japanese.  The way it is written is a visual representation of that when the language is written phonetically -- like when I romanized the Japanese word -- which is what the argument is.  Learning to make the sounds that match their phonetic representations is the thing we are discussing but SP and Awaclus are trying to muddy the waters with kanji.

Sure, it's hard to memorize 1800 or 5000 kanji.  But speaking Japanese is really, really easy.  Memorizing a funny SS might be simple, but speaking German is not.

It sounds like you're saying that, if you spell things phonetically, then they're easier to pronounce from their spelling.

I'm saying that, some sounds, even spelled phonetically, are harder to make with your mouth than others.

Danish is another ridiculously hard to pronounce language.  Ever drink Carlsberg beer?  You (and I) are saying it wrong.

[Limetime]

I don't speak Japanese, but I do speak German and English, and the idea that an English speaker would have an easier time learning Japanese is ludicrous. English is basically an easier to learn version of German (except in the pronounciation field, English pronounciation makes zero sense).

I don't care how complex German grammar is, the simple fact that you basically know half of the vocabulary already has to make it much easier.

I haven't tried to learn German, but I learned both Japanese and Italian fluently, and the latter was exponentially harder to learn, even though Latin languages are supposed to be easier.

German and English are not Latin they are germanic.

[Kirian]

Maybe we are talking past each other.  We are writing on a forum, so writing and reading is required, but I'm talking about speaking out loud -- and German just seems so obviously harder to speak than Japanese.  The way it is written is a visual representation of that when the language is written phonetically -- like when I romanized the Japanese word -- which is what the argument is.  Learning to make the sounds that match their phonetic representations is the thing we are discussing but SP and Awaclus are trying to muddy the waters with kanji.

Sure, it's hard to memorize 1800 or 5000 kanji.  But speaking Japanese is really, really easy.  Memorizing a funny SS might be simple, but speaking German is not.

It sounds like you're saying that, if you spell things phonetically, then they're easier to pronounce from their spelling.

I'm saying that, some sounds, even spelled phonetically, are harder to make with your mouth than others.

Danish is another ridiculously hard to pronounce language.  Ever drink Carlsberg beer?  You (and I) are saying it wrong.

But those sounds are only easier due to the language you grew up with.  Asimply someone who has studied German and listened to a lot of Japanese and Korean, I'm certain that German and Japanese have around the same number of sounds that are different from English.

Certainly for some people the velar fricative /x/ (final ch in German) is going to be harder than the alveolar flap that is halfway between /r/ and /l/ in Japanese... but for some people the opposite is true.

[Kirian]

Meanwhile in English, none of bough, cough, dough, rough, and through rhyme... and slough has two different meanings, one of which rhymes with through, and one with rough.