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I'd assume the real reason is that German is a very hard language rarely taught/learned in the US, and conversely, every German student with university access q

I'd assume the real reason is that German is a very hard language rarely taught/learned in the US, and conversely, every German student with university access qualification has had at least 7 years of English lessons...

peterfirefly 11y ago
It is one of the easier ones to learn if your starting point is English. There are also plenty of study materials available -- for free. Plus the Goethe institutes. You can watch German TV here: mediathek.daserste.de/sendungVerpasst Start with "Die Sendung mit der Maus" on Sundays :)
sampo 11y ago
> German is a very hard language Usually German is classified in the second most easy category for native English speakers to learn. http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang...
lispm 11y ago
Funky, English is a Germanic language. Half of the words in English sentences are rooted in German or are otherwise related... I Ich real real is ist that das hard hart -> schwer learned -> gelernt in in the den and und student Student university Universität has hat had hatte years jahre lessions lektion
- notahacker 11y ago
  sure, but the Anglo Saxon words sharing common roots with German have diverged at lot once you get beyond phrases as simple as "mein Name ist". It's not just a reflection on the English education system that after 5 years of high school German (and an A grade!) I could often grok more from a text written in a Romance language I hadn't learned than written German. On the plus side, German has no sounds English speakers should find difficult to pronounce, nicely regular word order and a fondness for compound words which are as simple to remember as they are long, but by the standards of European language groups the vocabulary really isn't that similar.
- nationcrafting 11y ago
  Indeed (in der Tat), it's a remarkably easy language to learn for Anglo-saxons. Many words are even spelt the same way. Lamp lamp Light licht Arm arm Hand hand Finger finger Often words that are spelt weirdly in english (compared to how they're pronounced) make sense when you know the way they're pronounced in German e.g. eight (acht). The only real complications are to do with declensions (nominative, accusative, genitive, etc.), subject-verb-object syntax, and composed words. But any programmer who can work in different programming languages will find those rather easy to learn.
- panzi 11y ago
  And in Austrian dialect: I I learn learn English Englisch

peterfirefly 11y ago

It is one of the easier ones to learn if your starting point is English. There are also plenty of study materials available -- for free. Plus the Goethe institutes. You can watch German TV here: mediathek.daserste.de/sendungVerpasst Start with "Die Sendung mit der Maus" on Sundays :)

sampo 11y ago

> German is a very hard language Usually German is classified in the second most easy category for native English speakers to learn. http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang...

lispm 11y ago

Funky, English is a Germanic language. Half of the words in English sentences are rooted in German or are otherwise related... I Ich real real is ist that das hard hart -> schwer learned -> gelernt in in the den and und student Student university Universität has hat had hatte years jahre lessions lektion

notahacker 11y ago
sure, but the Anglo Saxon words sharing common roots with German have diverged at lot once you get beyond phrases as simple as "mein Name ist". It's not just a reflection on the English education system that after 5 years of high school German (and an A grade!) I could often grok more from a text written in a Romance language I hadn't learned than written German. On the plus side, German has no sounds English speakers should find difficult to pronounce, nicely regular word order and a fondness for compound words which are as simple to remember as they are long, but by the standards of European language groups the vocabulary really isn't that similar.
nationcrafting 11y ago
Indeed (in der Tat), it's a remarkably easy language to learn for Anglo-saxons. Many words are even spelt the same way. Lamp lamp Light licht Arm arm Hand hand Finger finger Often words that are spelt weirdly in english (compared to how they're pronounced) make sense when you know the way they're pronounced in German e.g. eight (acht). The only real complications are to do with declensions (nominative, accusative, genitive, etc.), subject-verb-object syntax, and composed words. But any programmer who can work in different programming languages will find those rather easy to learn.
panzi 11y ago
And in Austrian dialect: I I learn learn English Englisch