Posted: 4/14/2013 7:56:42 PM EDT
| How hard is it for an English speaker? |
German's a lot easier. I've taken a couple courses in each and for all my trouble I remember like one phrase.  ETA: Russian would be more useful though. There's more people that speak Russian who don't speak English than there are people who speak German and don't speak English. |
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Quoted:
I took German in high school and Russian in college. I think you'll find German to be much easier. With Russian you have to learn a whole new alphabet as well. The Cyrillic alphabet intrigues me. We used to have a Russian tractor (Belarus) and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the Russian half of the manual. |
| As someone who has done the latter and is working on the former, German is pretty easy. In fact, it is funny that the more German you understand, the more of the English language you understand as well. Russian has some weird sounds and one that sounds like nothing we've got in English. German was HS, Russian is with Rosetta Stone, I kinda wish it would emphasize the genders/cases of nouns or any of the changes for plurals etc... but they are not very apparent to me. In German, they are very important, so I would assume in Russian they are too, but I just haven't had enough time to get deep into it. |
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Russian isn't bad, especially if you have been exposed to Spanish. The Cyrillic alphabet takes a bit to learn, if you know you're Greek alphabet you are much better off. Many of the letters are similar or the same. Russian has a lot in common with French and English in terms of vocabulary since the Royals spoke french, and many new words (ie technology related) are the same as their English counterparts.
The hardest part for me in learning Russian has been prefixes and how they change the meanings of words. They also have some interesting grammatical differences compared to English. |
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The most difficult thing about german is that every noun has a gender, and there's no rhyme or reason to it.
Russian has it's own alphabet and vocal sounds that never occur in english Between the two, I'd learn Chinese  May as well learn the language of the new landlords 
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Quoted:
I took German in high school and Russian in college. I think you'll find German to be much easier. With Russian you have to learn a whole new alphabet as well. I did the same, and fully agree. German is much easier for an American to learn. Structure is closer to English, with similar number of cases. Spelling and pronunciation are actually quite easy, once you learn the rules. Russian has nearly twice the number of cases, and twice the number of verbs to learn (with perfective and imperfective verbs), and you have to learn a new alphabet. |
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Quoted: I'm with you. I only took a year of it in high school, but I picked it up again when I was stationed in Germany.I took four years of German back in High School, I found it easy to learn. Sad thing is that I've now forgotten a large chunk of it  Sadly, I've forgotten most of it too. But I remember it was pretty easy to pick it up. |
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with russian, it's really not the different sounds that make it hard. it's a completely different way of thinking in many cases, whereas german, french, and spanish all generally communicate similarly.
p.s.: why would you want to learn that savage tongue anyway? (i mean german). |
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Quoted:
I took four years of German back in High School, I found it easy to learn. Sad thing is that I've now forgotten a large chunk of it This but my best friend is German and I try to see him at least once a year and that gives my language skills a bit of a workout. I'm at a third grade level but it keep me conversational. I'd say German is easier to learn. Much easier to read and write as well. |
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German is a nightmare compared to English for a slavic spoken like me. Russian, from other side,is PITA even for bulgarians and we share almost common alphabet [Cyrillic,We invented it] and most of the words are with same roots. But prononce,ending and inflections/cases drove me mad numerous times in middle school.
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Picked up German pretty easy while stationed there. Remember that English is basically drunken German with some French words thrown in.
While the Grammar is different then English, you can use English Grammar and be understood.. You will just sound retarded. Russian is hard. The words are very hard to pronounce correctly, so it is very easy to forget. |