Originally Posted by Aviatrix

Re the references to Latin... if your first language is Chinese or Hungarian or Finnish, then knowing Latin will make learning German easier because both Latin and German are of the Indo-European language family, and having learnt one Indo-European language makes it easier to learn the next one. However, if your first language is English then Latin won't help that much because German and English are much more closely related than German and Latin. But... knowing Latin will still help in a small way because you will already be familiar with the concept of case endings.

And a general comment about learning German... I've once heard it said (possibly by my other half) that German is one of the easiest languages to learn to speak badly but one of the most difficult languages to learn to speak well. And while I can't comment on that from my own experience (as I grew up in Germany) I think this is probably right.

What makes German difficult is the fact that you have genders and cases. For example, tables are masculine, and depending on context "the table" can be either "der Tisch", "des Tisches", "dem Tisch" or "den Tisch". However... people are still going to understand you if you get the article wrong, and even if you say "die Tisch" (feminine) or "das Tisch" (neuter) they will still know that you are talking about a table... and if you're speaking with a foreign accent they won't even notice the fact that you got the article wrong because they are used to people with foreign accents getting the article wrong!

So... my advice for someone learning German for social purposes: Learn the words - learn how to string them together - but don't get too hung up on the finer points of grammar. The important thing is to be able to communicate, and learning how to communicate in German is - allegedly - quite easy.