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Why the huge popularity of German? | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6050 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 25 of 42 29 April 2010 at 5:34am | IP Logged | ||
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So most people are learning German for the love of it's culture then? Our of curiosity, how many plan to talk to Germans?
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| Rameau Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6107 days ago 149 posts - 258 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanC1, Danish Studies: Swedish, French, Icelandic | Message 26 of 42 29 April 2010 at 6:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I talk to German folks at least once a week, usually more frequently. They are a travel-loving people, so it's typically not too hard to find them all across the world.
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| apatch3 Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6185 days ago 80 posts - 99 votes Speaks: Pashto, English* Studies: Japanese, FrenchA2 | Message 27 of 42 29 April 2010 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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When the day comes that I decide its time to learn another language (which won't be until I achieve the highest possible qualifications in the languages I'm already studying, namely the N1 and C2 diplomas in Japanese and French respectively.)
It's going to be a difficult choice indeed... do i go for German? a language that I think sounds beautiful. I have lots of German friends (whom I speak to in English of course) Germans have an uncanny ability to speak English. Logically speaking Spanish would be more beneficial It's spoken in many more countries and is supposedly insanely similar to french, meanwhile German grammar is supposed to be nightmare (to be fair i was told Japanese grammar was a nightmare but it turned out to be incredibly simple). Hmm Who knows what I'll go for. Spanish certainly doesn't have very much influence in europe. *rips his hair out* 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5523 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 28 of 42 29 April 2010 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find Spanish grammar to be much harder, German grammar feels like "fancy" English with a bit more declining. Sometimes when I switch from German back into English, I end up trying to put my adjectives in plural >.< Edited by GREGORG4000 on 29 April 2010 at 11:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Hellblazer Tetraglot Pro Member Australia Joined 5322 days ago 7 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Armenian*, Russian, English, German Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 29 of 42 30 April 2010 at 4:43am | IP Logged | ||
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If you know German, plus another language, say English, then just go and read, say a Nietzsche work in English, and then the same thing in German. The difference is absolutely amazing. And once you got that (the feel of amazing difference), then you got the answer to your question as to why German is so popular.
IMHO it's one of the best, if not the best, language in the world. Just my 2 cents. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6949 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 30 of 42 30 April 2010 at 9:41am | IP Logged | ||
I think many of us can relate to the pain of having to choose between two linguistic loves. I too have been in this position more times than I can count (I suffer from severe chronic wanderlust!), but in the end, I think you'll find that passion will get you a lot further without burning out than practicality will. As someone who's studied Japanese, I'm certain you know what it's like to feel discouraged and burnt out, to wonder why you even started in the first place and whether it's worth it to continue. In that case, if your greatest motive to start learning Japanese had been the influential economy, you probably wouldn't have been able to get over those humps. On the other hand, I see from your profile that you like anime and video games, so your passions probably fueled a love and curiosity of Japan which gave you the drive to continue. Imagine how much harder it would have been to motivate yourself to learn Mandarin, for example, despite it being more practical, just because that curiosity and passion wouldn't have been spurring you on. So if you have friends who speak German, love the way it sounds, and can't get that desire to learn it out of your head, then by all means go for it instead of the more 'practical' choice that you just don't feel as strongly about. Just my 2 cents :) Back on topic.. the greatest reason I started learning German is in order to communicate with relatives and feel a connection with my family roots (my generation is the first not to speak German in my family, and I'd always felt like I was letting my older relatives down somehow). Besides that, Germany and Austria evoke such romantic images of Viennese music, castles, wooden cuckoo clocks, beer steins, Grimm fairy tales, green Bavarian farmlands, Enlightenment- and Romantic-era intellectuals, and all that, along with the more modern images of hip, cutting-edge, metropolitan Europe. Some people have the most romantic images associated with Italy, or France (which I can't say I understand at all), or Brazil, or Japan, or Amsterdam, which serves as a huge motivation to learn the language outside of all practical considerations such as GDP or how in-demand the language is. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 31 of 42 30 April 2010 at 10:39am | IP Logged | ||
I am afraid I must disagree with you on two points. It is not the language of continental Europe. If you go out into the streets of Europe what people will speak is English, in addition to their own language. Not German. And the working languages of the EU are English and French. As for your statement about Hitler I am still trying to find some way in which that makes sense - even after your explanation. I can accept that he was a great speaker. As for the claim from some that he was a great leader I shiver in disbelief. Even if we disregard all the innoncent people he murdered, and just look at the consequences for the people who followed him, he was about the worst leader ever. A leader that leads his people to the brink of distruction, and leaves them with a horrible reputation for the next 50 years is not a good leader in my book. In many ways, the Germans were his major victims, as the consequences for them has lasted for generations. AS for the initial question, I started learning German for the simple reason that it was compulsary in school. When you hit the 8th grade, WAM, you had to learn German. That does however not explain why I continued to learn German. I could have stopped after two years, and never looked at it again, and since most Germans I know speak English really well, I could have lived quite well without doing another day of German. My heart has always been with the Roman languages (French, Spanish, Italian) anyway. Nevertheless, when I found out that the high school I was supposed to attend could not offer me German, I decided to do high school in the evening, with an adult group, in one year in stead of three years. The good part was that I finshed high school at the age of 17, and started studying the University at the same age. The bad part was that I lost "my high school years". An all this just to get German. And why was that so important to me? My honest answer is that I don't know. More that anything it was a gut reaction, that learning German was neccesary. That I would have felt uneducated without having a fair knowledge of German. The fact that both my parents and my sister were fluent in German (my father was even a German teacher) might have had something to do with it. I did not even stop to think. When I grew up everyone knew some German (as I mentioned, it was compulsory), but now the overwhelming majority choose Spanish and French. My daughter has said she wants to learn German too, and I encourage that. The Norwegian labour market is screaming for people whon know German, as they are one of our major trading partners. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 30 April 2010 at 10:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5453 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 32 of 42 30 April 2010 at 1:16pm | IP Logged | ||
The working languages of the Commission are French, English and German, although English is probably most often used. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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