Is German really that hard to learn?

德语真的有那么难学吗?

Learn Languages with Steve Kaufmann

2026-02-06

12 分钟
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In this video, I break down common difficulties German learners have and what you can do about them.
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  • Hi, today I want to talk about German, why German isn't that difficult.

  • So I want to talk about some of the common difficulties that people experience with German and why in fact German is relatively easy to learn.

  • First of all,

  • let me say that one of my motivations

  • for developing Link was the fact that I had many books at home in German and in Spanish full of words that I had underlined and that I didn't know the meaning of and every time I looked them up in the dictionary I would forget them.

  • So with the system like link of course I can look words up and then review them later on so that was a major motivation.

  • And reading in German has always been a major part of my sort of discovery of enjoyment of and eventually,

  • you know, my ability to improve my level in the German language.

  • But up front, German does present some difficulties, which can be a little bit intimidating.

  • And so I like to refer to the famous formula.

  • put forward by Lom Kato, a famous Hungarian polyglot.

  • She learned so many languages primarily by reading, and she had a formula,

  • which was that the result in our language learning activity consists of a formula,

  • which is how much time we put in, what our level of interest is, which is,

  • call it, motivation, and the denominator is inhibition, frustration, things that stand in our way.

  • So with German, Obviously, you want to put in a lot of time.

  • Second of all, and I'm going to get to this, this whole issue of motivation.

  • And then,

  • if we right up front are discouraged or intimidated by certain apparent difficulties in German,

  • that kind of ruins the whole learning result.