German classes in Germany

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Apparently, given the lack of answers to the question, it would seem that Germany is a lousy place to learn German.

 

Well I must say (being a non-German, but speaking it fluently) German is surprisingly easier than english to learn. The gramma is quiet easy to obtain contrary to the english. At least I found that. Especially if you have some mathematical skills as German is the most logical language worldwide.

Depends. Many a word actually came from Danish. Words connected to the time prior to the French ie house, book, and the like including many maritime words. Beowulf is more Scandinavian (or Old-Nordic as the language was called - Icelandic is close to that language now, but in the rest of Scandinavia it has changed a lot) or should I say written by settlers in what was called Danelagen (The western/central part of England).

Friesian is also spoken in Germany and Denmark, actually it's stetched along the coastline of the Netherlands, Germany and southern Denmark. Remember they have their own flag It's a remniscent of sorts from older days dating back to around year 4-500 AFAIK.


Tal: It's not only a few dozen words: it's so many more, they can't simply be listed here. But try the English word to begin, it's very alike in Scandinavia, Germany and Netherland.

Freiburg is an excellent town!

 

It's definitly not finite as the language evolves. Best examples: Kindergarten/save (as in the moneystorageboxthingy) have switched over only relatively recently.

Could be, but I found (native dane) that learning english/german at roughly the same time there was greater similarities than not. Ofcourse you can find similarities between Finnish (being Magyay (sp?) in origin and thus not even indo-european) Italian (being Roman in origin) and German. But it's mostly words dating only a few hundreds years back. I'm not good at english grammar and thus I can't compare those two variables, I didn't observe huge differences as between Italian/German.

 

Well, these are actually completely different languages (with dialects of their own). I don't want to drift off topic too much, but here is a nice example from Wikipedia:

Saterland Frisian: Die Wänt strookede dät Wucht uum ju Keeuwe un oapede hier ap do Sooken.
North Frisian: Di dreng aide dåt foomen am dåt kan än mäket har aw da siike.
West Frisian: De jonge streake it famke om it kin en tute har op 'e wangen.

I guess they originate from the same language or something like that, as the sentences have a similar construction, but if the West Frisian translation (the one spoken in the Netherlands) wasn't there, I wouldn't have known what the upper two meant.

 

Ha! I didn't knew that! I only posses a little myself. I think it dates back to old Dorestad somewhere in the Netherlands.

 

I think, arriving somewhat late in this thread, that the similarity between English and German becomes larger the further up north you get. In the north, at the coast and around Hamburg the local dialect has some similarities. Just like in my area the dialect becomes more similar to Dutch the closer you come to the border.

As a German native speaker, I found English very easy to learn, it basically flew to me - the hard part was to get into the subtleties. That took me years. I believe that German, especially the grammar, is more complex right from the start. The difficulties in English are more subtle and less easy to grasp. They certainly aren't part of the basic grammatical structure.

As for taking classes in Germany, go for it.

 

Yeah, I'm definitely thinking about it. Right now it is a bit of a toss-up between taking German in Germany or French in France. As regards the location, my friend from Hamburg has suggested Berlin as fitting my requirements.

 

Berlin is always worth a journey.