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English vs. Swedish vs. German? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Viktor77 Newbie United States Joined 6160 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 1 of 14 14 January 2008 at 12:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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I speak English as my native language, and I'm learning Swedish and did some basic study of German. While exploring the language tree I noticed Swedish, with the Nordic languages, was further away from English as was German, except for me, Swedish is 10x easier to learn than German. Swedish is like plug and play English with a few exceptions, mostly being really outstanding grammar that's easy to distinguish.
So, my question is, if German is more closely related to English than is Swedish, how come Swedish, well to me, comes easier than German? Is it just me, or is this usual? Edited by Viktor77 on 14 January 2008 at 12:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 14 14 January 2008 at 6:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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It is true that the historian linguists have put the split between the Eastern (Gothic), Northern (the precursor of Old Norse) and Western Germanic branches further back then the split within the Western group into one that comprised the precursors of Anglosaxon (and Frisian) and one with the precursors of Durch-Low German on one side and High German on the other. But all this belongs to a dark and distant time 1500 years back (from maybe 200 and to the end of the Migration period), and there has been a lot of developments later that are at least as important from a language learner's perspective. The main point is that High German has kept a lot of morphology that all Scandinavian languages except Icelandic have dropped after the Viking age (apart from a few fixed expressions). Likewise, English has thrown out most of the complicated Anglo-Saxon morphology shortly after the Normannic invasion in 1066. The result is that the Swedish grammar (apart from the postclitic definite article) and the English grammar (apart from the weird use of "to do") are very close. Add a solid intake of English loanwords in Swedish and you have something that shouldn't be too difficult to learn for a typical Anglophone if you just want to do it badly enough.
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| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6122 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 3 of 14 20 February 2008 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
Even though, historically, German and English are both considered Western Germanic languages, Modern English and Modern High German are really not that similar. Modern English is heavily influenced by Latin, Norman French, and Greek while Modern High German is not. Additionally, German is simply a very difficult language, hence the German saying "Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache" German language, difficult language. Edited by JW on 20 February 2008 at 4:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6665 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 4 of 14 21 February 2008 at 4:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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Not to forget the High German consonant shift, which moved German away from the other Germanic languages.
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| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6665 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 5 of 14 22 February 2008 at 8:55am | IP Logged | |||||
I think German is relatively easy and I have never really understood why it is considered difficult by so many people. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6122 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 6 of 14 22 February 2008 at 9:52am | IP Logged | |||||
My short answer is: three genders that are not intuitive; the case system; the word order; the vocabulary. For my long answer, I couldn't say it any better than Mark Twain: Mark Twain "The Awful German Language" Edited by JW on 22 February 2008 at 10:57am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6665 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 7 of 14 22 February 2008 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ok, but many languages have non-intuitive genders and it doesn't really make much of a difference if there are two or three (in both cases there is one extra item of information to learn). The case system is a frequent source of mistakes, but you'll be understood even with many declension mistakes because the word order is relatively fixed and as German uses a lot of prepositions as well, it's not crucial to understanding (unlike Latin for example). The word order might seem strange in the beginning, but it is very regular. Vocabulary is much easier in German than French, for example, because many words are built from simpler elements: Flugzeug (flight thing) whereas in Romance languages you often have to learn a completely unrelated vocabulary item. Edited by Marc Frisch on 22 February 2008 at 5:24pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Earle Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6315 days ago 276 posts - 276 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Norwegian, Spanish | Message 8 of 14 06 March 2008 at 12:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm of an age when there were many American kids exposed to Latin in high school (didn't even have to be a Catholic HS). Having learned the declensions in Latin, German seemed simple in comparison. In fact, the cases are so close, all one has to do is learn the different labels and the rules of inflection are almost the same. I remain happy that I had Latin as a bridge, and its usefulness doesn't extend only to German...
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