What are the upsides of learning German?

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#1

Hallo Leute!

Learning German is not just painful and complicate, I’m sure some of you find a few grammar concepts easy to understand, no? I know that I do, so I thought that instead of only talking about the downsides of German learning we could talk about the upsides.

:open_book: For me, the easy part is the conjugation! In comparison to French or Spanish, German conjugations are pretty straightforward and don’t have many irregulars (like in French).

:lips: I find it pretty cool too to put the verb at the end of the sentence! I love that the German language forces us to listen carefully to our interlocutors. In France, people jump in easily in the conversation after they heard the verb. It’s frustrating and annoying.

:brain: Finally, I love that the German language is so logical and has many words similar to the French and Spanish ones.

What about you?

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#2

Let me shamelessly plug my blog post here, which describes the benefits of learning any second language: The Benefits of Being Bilingual

What I appreciate most about my German brain is that it is so good at problem solving and filtering out all the things I don’t need. This ties in with what you said about the language being so logical :brain:

Something really fun about German, that isn’t really possible in some languages, is stringing words together to make a new noun. If you need a word for some chocolate you bought your favourite person for their birthday, you could call it Lieblingsmenschengeburtstagsschokolade (favourite-person-birthday-chocolate). It isn’t a real word obviously, but everyone will understand what that special bar of chocolate is :slight_smile: :chocolate_bar:

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#3

Hi antomorr, great blog post :+1: I especially like your insights of the German soul :joy::rofl::sweat_smile:
" German Me” can be brutally honest and frank (almost rude),"…very true …talking about Germans ( including me ) in general that is :wink:
Another upside of knowing another language I think is being able to read authors, philosophers and poets in the original language.
In the Jim Jarmusch movie “Paterson” his let’s a Japanese poet who is averse to translation say: " Poetry in translation is like taking a shower with raincoat on."
…I have nothing to add and who cares that his English isn’t perfect :wink:
Here is one example of great German poetry

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#4

I have to agree with Gcamus.

German is much more logical than Latin languages. I speak Portuguese and Spanish and learning English was difficult because of “no verbs conjugation”. For any Latin language speaker, this is a mind blowing!
Now with German I can use my knowledge from the other languages I already speak to help me.
I am only at the begging of the journey but leaving in Austria definitely helps!

Also can be so logical and my tip would be: don’t be scared with how big the words are! German just don’t like to “waist space” with separations! :wink:

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#5

Thank you guys for sharing your experiences. I find it so interesting when people speak about their different points of views and difficulties they encounter when learning languages.
For me, french has been the most difficult so far but I blame it on the fact that I have never lived in a french speaking country for a longer time. I find it extremely difficult to learn a language without being surrounded by it.

Cheers and have a great weekend!

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#6

I like how in German, you can just create new words by putting lots of other words together.

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#7

@stefilios, yes I find that really cool too!

There are so many German words that sound like funny combos to my English-native ears, like Brustwarze :grin: (If you don’t know this word yet, I suggest you look up ‘Brust’ and ‘warze’ and take a guess!)

You can find a long list of fantastic German words under this post ‘Your favorite German word’.

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