is French an easier language to learn than German?

[yellowsnow]

For me, German was much more difficult than French, Spanish, or Italian.

My German is very poor and I usually pick up on languages easily.

[Huckleberry3911948]

both difficult not because of spoken language but bek of grammar.
considering we got 14% hispanic, spanish is a much better pick and more conducive to actually doing something with that 110k student loan!!

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by Angorlee

I have started learning German but after a few months find that it is diffecult to understand a newspaper such as Bild.de. Whereas I can understand Paris Match magazine much easier. I am just reading headlines in both but it seems French is much easier. Or is it just me?

No, it's not you. Spoken German and journalistic and scientific German are very different. You can't expect to jump into more advanced German like that from the beginning. But French is definitely more accessible; there's not that big gap between the spoken language and journalistic language.

[silverbelles]

Back when I was starting out in languages, I found French more suited to my tastes than German. I don't know what it is, but German never clicked for me.

[theoldnorthstate]

as someone who also speaks both, French was easier to learn and sticks with me longer. But on my last trip to Germany I was doing just fine after the first day. It came back.

My problems with German are the gutteral back of the throat nature of pronunciation, and the compound nature of the words. I could learn the grammar but I still understand and read it far better than I can speak it.

[nimchimpsky]

That depends entirely on which languages you already speak and what elements of language you find easier to learn or harder to learn personally.