Fun fact, despite being more closely related, German is considered somewhat harder to learn for English speakers than Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian). Due to historical events, conquests, migration, etc, more than half of our vocabulary derives from Latin (and a good chunk of that is from French).
I’m just going by the FSI rankings. Romance languages are “Category 1” necessitating 600-750 class hours. German is “Category 2” needing 900 hours.
I think vocabulary is more important anyhow, if you know the words you can piece together the meaning even if it’s in a strange order. If you don’t, the order doesn’t really matter at all.
Fun fact, despite being more closely related, German is considered somewhat harder to learn for English speakers than Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian). Due to historical events, conquests, migration, etc, more than half of our vocabulary derives from Latin (and a good chunk of that is from French).
OK, maybe I’m wrong, but that seems to be a MASSIVE miscomprehension of the relationship between West Germanic and olde French.
In fact, modern German is arguably EASIER to learn for English-speakers due to all the common grammar and sentence structure.
I’m just going by the FSI rankings. Romance languages are “Category 1” necessitating 600-750 class hours. German is “Category 2” needing 900 hours.
I think vocabulary is more important anyhow, if you know the words you can piece together the meaning even if it’s in a strange order. If you don’t, the order doesn’t really matter at all.