How difficult is it to learn a new language from scratch?

[jbombard]

Put yourself in an environment where you need to speak and you will learn out of necessity. Learning from a book in an environment where you don't have an opportunity to use it, is much much harder.

[Deleted]

No it isn't...
Picking up a few basics in a few days doesn't mean you can master it easy....
The grammar rules would quickly teach you otherwise.

Pretty much this, German has very hard grammar, much harder than English.

[Deleted]

Hello.

I've been thinking of moving in with a friend of mine who lives in berlin, but i don't speak a word in german.
I speak 2 languages, one is the language that we speak at home so i didn't have to take a class for it or anything, and english i learnt from hours of binge watching, playing video games etc.

I was never exposed to german in my life and I don't know even one word. How difficult is it to study how to speak german? how long does it take to achieve a reasonable level? I'm mildly intelligent and I intend to devote a fair amount of time and effort for it.

So...anyone learnt a language by himself? (not english)

Look, this is a very complex question to answer due to several points that need to be adressed.

As yourself I'm self taught in english from exposure, And this also works with other languages, getting german movies, books, magazines etc... Will ease your studies into the language because you need to force yourself to understand the language to grasp context.

But as far as languages go, German is far from the worst to learn, there are way more complex languages to learn.
Also, you already know english which is another germanic language, leading to an ease to learn another. I speak english and another language who both belong to the germanic group of languages, making it rather easy for me to grasp german at a basic level.

The difficulty comes with grammar and the likes, but it's far from impossible, quite the opposite, most people are naturally inclined to understand speech.

But yeah, there is a fact that some people are naturally better at understanding and learning new languages, some can pick up a new language each year by studies and pretty soon speak 6-8 languages without any issues. Some can never learn another language, because their natural disability to grasp it makes them give up.

So yeah, german is one of the easier languages to learn, and how easy it is entirely depends on your dedication and natural predisposition to learning a new language. And when I say it's easy, I mean that it is properly structured with grammar etc, alot of languages have no defined structure but are more about feeling.

[STS]

Imho it's easy to learn up to a point in German where people can understand you if you already have basic english knowledge, as the basic grammar isn't all that different and quite a few words are related to each other. Perfecting it is a bitch otoh. Simply getting the genders of nouns and objects right can be a lifelong quest.

Another thing about learning German, which is both a blessing and a curse, is that most people <50 in Germany have a decent understanding of english. So when you're over there and you're trying to struggle to speak German, most people will just talk back to you in english. I had a buddy who was stationed over there and tried to practise his German with his German friends and had to keep telling them to talk back to him in German so he could improve his German skills, but most of the time they'd just switch back to english after a sentence or two.

[Sylar Hao]

There are many involved factors when it comes to learning a new language.
1. Your capability to learn // how good you are at languages. - Some people learn languages really fast, others struggle a lot.
2. How hard is your native language compared to the new one. - If the new one is easier, then you should learn it more or less fast and viceversa.
3. Wether the new language belongs to the same group of languages as your native one or not. Latin, Germanic... etc. For example, I'm French and I've lived most of my life in Spain, I studied Italian at college and I found it extremely easy to learn because of similarity. But I tried to learn Japanese and I found it really confusing (not hard though), I couldn't keep studying it because of time, but I'd like to start it over again.
4. Wether you speak more than one language or not. - People who have been taught more than one native language structure languages in their brains in a different way, and this help when learning new languages.

So in your case, you already speak two languages, Hebrew and English, and English belongs to the same group of languages as German. I don't know if Hebrew is harder or easier than German, but in my opinion you should be fine.

Music and TV are great sources for learning languages, use them to have some basics before travelling there

[RigidCannibal]

An important thing to note is that while English is a Germanic language, it has heavy influences from French, so just because you know English doesn't mean you'll be able to learn German quickly.

[Deleted]

I am German, I know English, German, Spanish and French (Spanish has been my main language for the last 10 years) and in my opinion, German is the hardest language to learn in that pack. And i think the older you are the harder it is to learn. But its not impossible.

When I was a kid, a familiar from Spain came to us, 2 years, and he ended up speaking german really good, with a very good pronunciation. He was like 30 years old.

If you like idioms you should learn italian, it's very similar to spanish I met an italian guy and after 6 months with him I could speak italian fluently. My main languaje is spanish but can speak english an italian and understand portuguese

[Wildtree]

So yeah, german is one of the easier languages to learn, and how easy it is entirely depends on your dedication and natural predisposition to learning a new language. And when I say it's easy, I mean that it is properly structured with grammar etc, alot of languages have no defined structure but are more about feeling.

I beg to differ.....
I showcase it on something as trivial as a dash sign.. Looks very innocent -
When to use it, how to use it....
http://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/rec...ln/bindestrich

28 different grammar rules for how to properly use a dash.

If it was easier..... people wouldn't fail so bad at dictations and essays. Everyone would ace them, as Germans..

[Mentia]

Here's a question for Germans. I am planning on visiting Germany next year and I am from America. I can't speak or write German at all. Would you perfer an American to attempt to learn German and probably butcher the language while trying to speak, or would you rather me just speak English? I also know not to be arrogant and expect everyone there to understand English.