> I always understood di­ffizil to be the correct translation of the word difficult. I think that’s misleading or even wrong. Source: native speaker. First, i

> I always understood di­ffizil to be the correct translation of the word difficult. I think that’s misleading or even wrong. Source: native speaker. First, it’s a very rare word that would definitely stand out, even in an already formal conversation. More importantly, “diffizil” is mostly reserved for problems that require a lot of fine motor skills or finesse. It would be wrong to say that lifting some large boulder is “diffizil”, for example, except as a joke. You might use it for repairing a watch or a complicated negotiation (“eine diffizile Angelegenheit”), however.