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Better German Podcast with Susi

Susanne Schilk-BlĆ¼mel
Since 09/2023 70 episodes

Ep 69 Why is German So Difficult - or is it?

2026-05-06 20 min

Description & Show Notes

šŸŽ§ Episode 69: Why is German so difficult ā€“ or is it?
In this episode, Better German Podcast, Susi takes a closer look at one of the most common beliefs about learning German: that itā€™s ā€œvery difficult.ā€ But is that actually trueā€”or just something many learners have come to believe?
Youā€™ll explore what makes German objectively more challenging than some languages (especially for English speakers), but also why itā€™s far from the hardest language out there. More importantly, this episode focuses on what really creates difficulty when learningā€”and how you can change that.

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Free Placement with exam/questionnaire, personal program, and interview to confirm placement and answer any questions. Courses are online, include materials, and combine self-study and live lessons. Pricing starts at ā‚¬100/month, depending on your program. šŸ‘‰Take the placement exam: https://bettergerman.info/testĀ 

šŸ”‘ What youā€™ll learn in this episode
  • Why German is considered ā€œmedium difficultyā€ for English speakers
  • The real reason German feels harder than languages like Spanish or Italian
  • How cases (der, die, das) and flexible word order work
  • Why pronunciation in German is actually more consistent than in English
  • A surprising advantage: German has fewer tenses in everyday speech
  • Why some languages are objectively harder than German
  • The difference between objective difficulty and your personal experience
  • The two main reasons why learning can feel ā€œtoo hardā€
  • How to recognize when your learning method isnā€™t working
  • Why missing stepsā€”not lack of talentā€”cause frustration
  • How step-by-step learning makes German manageable (and even easy)
šŸ’” Key idea from this episode
If something feels very difficult, it usually doesnā€™t mean you canā€™t learn it.
It means:
  • either the method isnā€™t right
  • or a step is missing
When learning is structured correctly, every step should feel doable.
šŸ”— Links & Resources
šŸ“Œ You may also like
  • How to Actually Learn German (Ep 4)
  • German Cases Explained (Podcast series)
  • Pronunciation-focused episodes with repeat-after-me practice
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If this episode helped you rethink how difficult German really is, leaving a review is a great way to support the podcast and help more learners find it.

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Free Placement with exam/questionnaire, personal program and interview to confirm placement and answer any questions. Courses are online, include materials and combine self study and live lessons. Pricing starts at ā‚¬100/month, depending on your program. šŸ‘‰ Take the placement exam: https://bettergerman.info/test

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Transcript

Welcome to this episode of the Better German Podcast. In this episode, we're going to look over why is German so difficult, or is it? is there an objective scale on how difficult German really is? I know, many people say, oh, it's so difficult, so maybe you're not gonna like everything I'm saying, but I think it's worth that you hear it. And we're also gonna look at subjectively, so personally, if something has gotten difficult for you, what does it mean about learning German? And also, and I think that's the most important thing, we're gonna go over. How can you make sure that it's not so difficult, or what can you do to make it easier for you? Okay, so let's jump into it. I'm gonna link a few, articles about it if you want to hear more of it. But basically, easily said there is a scale, that is used a lot on the difficulty of language, and it is a scale, made by an institute, I'm gonna link it. And they're basically judging how fast can people, and this is for people speak English as a native language, how fast can they learn different languages and, okay. German is not amongst the easiest ones here, so Spanish, Italian, a lot of European languages would be easier here, okay. we're gonna look at why that is in a second. And then the next level of difficulty is where German is at. And it's interesting, because German is the only language, the only European language in that level of difficulty. And it is more difficult than Italian, Spanish and Swedish and languages like that. Again, if you speak English as a native language, and then after that there's a whole lot of other, there's two more levels. the most difficult ones are Chinese and, I actually don't know them all by heart, but I'm gonna link to it. So here's the thing, it means German is not amongst the easiest languages, but it's not all that hard. So why is it harder than, for example, Spanish, Italian, or English for that matter? Because we have cases, That means we are changing, words, nouns, and pronouns, so words like table chair and he, she, it, and so on according to the function in their sentence. English has a very, very strict word order. I will say something like, the man sees the tree.- And I know that the man is looking and the tree is being looked at, not just because of logic, but because of the sequence. If I say the the tree sees the man, we are in a different genre. So it becomes creepy. the point is, the only way how I say, who's doing the looking, who's doing the action of a sentence and who's being looked at, is the word order. could be a little theoretical for you, I understand. But anyway, you can understand that the word order is very strict in English. It's always, Peter reads the book, Mary Cooks dinner. She watches the children, it's always a very strict sequence and there is not a lot of variation. In German, we have a much, less strict word order. Why or how can we do that? Because we know, or we can say in German, you can say who is doing the action and who's receiving the action by other things, and these are called cases. So basically in German what we have is we have changes depending on Function. , and we have "der, die, das" . And that makes a little, I mean, it's not that hard once you look at it, but that's just different. And because it is so different, it could be hard. Another reason is. that the pronunciation could be different. It's not so hard for English speaking people, but it could be because we have sounds that do not exist in English. quite a lot of them. So that could be a challenge. And the fact of the der, die, das, so there is a lot of variation here because we have. Male, female and neutral things. These are, so anyway, that, that's the main thing. There's other things that are simpler in German, like tenses. For example, if you, for day to day spoken English, I'm looking now at mainly spoken because that's the main form of communication that people want to master when they learn a foreign language in most cases. In spoken English, you need eight tenses, eight different forms of the verb to speak correctly and people use them. there is a difference, for example, between I walk, I walk in the park every day, or I am walking right now and I will be walking tomorrow, or next year I will walk in Paris, or I have been walking for an hour, but I'm getting tired now or I have walked this way every day. I think I had them all. So these are eight tenses. In German. You're just saying "Ich gehe" or "Ich bin gegangen". These are two tenses that cover all of these eight forms. The rest we cover with additional words. So that is, for example, something that is simpler also the, the pronunciation. For most people, when you learn it in German, it's actually simpler because even though from English to German, there's a few sounds that you have to learn. There's less variation. for example, if you learn to read as a kid in an English speaking country, it can be tricky because there are so many different ways of saying letter A or so many different ways of saying different combinations. That can be tricky. It's more about how it's written up than how it's said. In German, this is much less irregular, so if you learn German, it is easier to learn the pronunciation correctly once you have mastered those extra sounds. So that's just a few of those examples. there's other languages that are much harder to learn for English speaking people. So for example, if you learn, most Slavic languages, you will find them more difficult because there is more changes, they also have cases, but they do it all with endings. So there is every word, like every noun and every verb changes constantly within the sentence, the ending. In German, this is not that hard. So German is kind of like a medium thing, you could say for an English speaking person between the languages that are really easy to learn and the languages that are quite hard or very hard to learn. But that being said, everything you learn. When you start with it could appear difficult, and everything that you have mastered is easy, and I can guarantee you, if you think that learning German is very, very, very hard, there are two things that are most likely the case. Either you are using a method. Altogether that doesn't work out. you, whatever you use, it's, if it's a book, it doesn't matter. That could be the case for books, videos, that has nothing to do if you are learning by yourself or if you're learning in a course, or if you are learning with videos or if you're learning with a podcast or whatever you could employ. If the method, that is built in whatever they're using, the book, the videos, the course isn't good, or right, then it appears too hard. Or let's put it the other way, around, if it is too hard, then the method isn't good. They haven't broken it down, they are not explaining it easily enough. They're not giving you steps that you can master because if you are learning correctly, every single step is doable and shouldn't be too hard. It should be just the right step for you to use. And if it is very big, then there is something wrong. And then of course, even in the best course or in the best book, it can happen that you individually didn't get a particular step. For example, let's say. If you learn swimming and you have a good swimming teacher, then he will have something for you as a first step. So if somebody, for example, is afraid of the water, the first step would have to be that he's comfortable around water. So it would probably be just sitting at the water until he can be at the water, and then maybe the next step could be standing in the water. Being comfortable in the water and the next step could be, for example, for me it was floating on the back, but still holding onto the edge of the pool and doing that until I could actually do it without actually having to hold onto the edge of the pool. And then the next step was to just do the motions of swimming in dry, actually. And the next step for me was doing the motions, wearing, like how do you call this, these little floaty thingies on your arms. And then the next step. Was to just wear one of them. That was for me. I'm not saying I'm not a swimming teacher, there could be better ways of doing that, but the point is I did it step by step until I was finally able to swim. There's other ways they're teaching babies, like babies, like three, four months old babies to swim. And they go step by step by step. So whenever you learn something and it seems to be very hard, what it means is that there's a step for you missing. And if it is like that all the time, then you probably don't have the right method. Then probably the book or the course or the teacher is no good. If it is just happening occasionally or in a specific moment, then it is about you. Then you have to go back and go to where you think everything was perfect and you will see that probably there is something you didn't practice. In our swimming example, if the person is fine with the water and then he starts floating and he's like, yeah, I can float now. And then you're going to the next thing, and then it seems very hard. Then you go back to, oh, he couldn't actually really float. He just did it for seconds, but he couldn't actually float. Or you could say, okay, good. He practiced the motions, but he didn't actually get them right. So he needs to practice those more. In German, what could happen is I'm trying to have you make sentences, for example, when you, how do we apply that? So the first thing is you need to learn a hell of a lot of words, not a hell, but you need to learn a few hundred words before you go into other things. But how do we learn words? For example, the first thing in my courses, I'm writing them down, so you are writing down the words and you are finding out what they mean. If these are nouns, you will also write the "der, die,das" because that's what's needed to use the word. Okay, then, so we make sure that you have the word and we make sure that you have the translation, and then we start just saying the word, not remembering anything, just saying the word and we keep repeating it, we usually go down the list and down the list. If you hear, I have many, many podcast episodes where I'm doing that. You just listen and then you repeat, and you repeat, and you repeat and you repeat. And you do that until you can really do that without a problem. And then the next thing, is usually that you, use the word, you make examples. You use it in some communication, in some way. You use it in a game, you use it in a conversation, you use it in sentences, most cases, and the, the easiest way is to, to use sentences. You can make sentences by yourself or you can make sentences with a study partner, and then you write them. So you have all these steps, and after these steps, you really know how to use those words. And then you go to the next word and then you go to the next word. Same thing with sentences. I'm teaching you a way of saying something like, Do you like Apples Magst du Ƅpfel? So "Magst du..." means do you like, okay. And then you know, you have to know. Some words with their plural forms, and then you can use this, and then we make sentences. And the first step is, I'm going through with you just translating it and I'm saying it, you're repeating it, and then you're practicing it yourself, and then you're practicing it by yourself until you don't have to think about it. And until it is easy and it's become sort of natural. And then the next one and so on, these are example. But in many courses, as I said, if it is like that and it always seems super hard, then probably you have to change your book, your course, the videos, and if you are doing fine and you're progressing fine, and then you hit a, specific point where you feel, oops, this is very hard, and you just have to go back and practice a little bit more before that. Actually this is mostly what I wanted to say about things that are too difficult. I've made my courses, I've designed my courses very carefully around this point to not make it too difficult and to keep having it be interesting. And that is maybe one more thing that I wanna say is we have been almost conditioned or probably not almost, so much to think into learning has to be difficult and we have to learn things verbatim and we have to force ourselves to commit things to our memory Sometimes I found people not trust the fact that it can be easy. So that is maybe another difficulty that you have been made to believe that it has to be super hard and super difficult, and it doesn't have to be, I'm telling you that it doesn't have to be. I have made my courses so that it's not the case. So if you're interested in learning very differently, then you're very welcome. And I have different courses I have just added, another small group course. where you can learn pretty much independent on what your level is. And there's a few places open when you're interested in a course, what you can do is to just do a placement exam and then take it up in an interview. If you're interested in the method, there is a podcast episode, and it's also available as a YouTube video, I'm gonna link it. It's episode four, How to Actually Learn German. And if you wanna know more about how things become too difficult, this is taken from L. Ron Hubbards study technology, and I'm gonna link to that as well. I. If you enjoy the podcast, then please give it a review. And also maybe you wanna check out the, podcast membership, so the podcast community there is a free tier and there is a VIP tier. The VIP tier is only a few bucks a month, and it gives you early access to the episodes. And in both cases you have some great, possibilities. So check it out at bettergerman.info/community. Okay, good. So talk to you soon. Bye-bye.

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