As a native french speaker (french-canadian at that), learning english was a rather long arduous process even with the insane amount of influence on TV in Montreal.
I didn't speak english all that well until I was about 16, at which time I was hanging out with english-canadian friends. It really helped me in that regards. Then I went to college in english, still in Canada. I spent a lot of time doing the 2-language dictionary shuffle but it worked out in the end.
I've been to Germany twice (7 days + 10 days) and I can pick up certain expressions, price of stuff, etc. I've never really taken a single lesson or read a book - but that's in my future.
All this to say that I find German rather similar to english in the roots of the words. French uses latin roots, Germany uses Germanic roots akin to english. Anyways that's my personal experience, I'm sure someone will correct me.
[To this day, the word "learned" is like nails on a chalkobard - everybody in Canada that I know says "learnt"
)
JP
Originally Posted by
caspritz78
The German language belongs to the family of Indo-Germanic languages which has nothing to do with the Latin language family. Anyway German has other obstacles. I just say der, die, das. Anyway don't worry too much about it. Try to speak as much as possible even if you make mistakes. People will appreciate that you try. Since I live not far from Heidelberg feel free to contact me by PM when you are in Germany.