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Three Reasons Why You Think “Learning German Is Hard” – and What You Can Do About It
Some people find German difficult to learn, while others find it easy. Why do people experience learning German so differently? There are several reasons why a language may feel difficult. Here are the three most common ones:
1. Your native language influences how hard German feels
Maybe your language doesn’t have articles, which makes it easy to forget them in German. Or perhaps your native language doesn’t distinguish between [R] and [L]. To you, they sound the same—like “Rose” and “Lose.”
Solution: Focus specifically on these tricky points. Write a note that says: “German needs articles: der, die, das” and place it somewhere you’ll see it often. Make it bright and noticeable. The more often you see it, the more it sticks. Soon, you’ll visualize it in your mind, training your subconscious to notice the articles automatically.
2. German is your first foreign language
If German is your first foreign language, you may not yet know how to learn a language. Suddenly, words like “accusative” and “subjunctive” appear, and you need to understand them first.
Solution: Practice every day what you’ve learned. For each grammar topic, write the same sentence ten times. This strengthens your hand-brain connection and reinforces new structures, vocabulary, and language patterns. Always show your sentences to your teacher—only correct sentences should be written repeatedly.
Read through your class notes and try to understand them. Ask yourself: “How would I say this in my native language? Are there differences? If so, what are they?” This trains your brain to analyze the language from the outside. Take your time—just 5–10 minutes a day is enough.
3. Your mindset can make learning harder than it needs to be
If you start with thoughts like these, you make things unnecessarily difficult and shape your entire learning approach around them:
🤔 “I’ve heard German is hard.”
Everyone has a different language-learning background. You can’t generalize. Maybe your experience will be completely different, and negative expectations can block that.
Solution: Make your own experience with German. Join a course. Our German courses are designed to help you overcome your fear of speaking. You speak a lot from day one. Our teachers know how to help you speak naturally and confidently. You’ll see how much easier daily life becomes when you understand more and start responding in German.
German language course (2 mornings per week) ⚡ Frankfurt intensive German course ⚡ German evening class Frankfurt Main
😬 “I’ll just speak English first—it’s faster.”
Procrastination won’t help. Every time you delay speaking German, your inner momentum fades. Not speaking German becomes a habit, and your initial motivation gets diluted with thoughts like, “It works anyway.” You never truly learn the language that way.
Solution: Speak German. The first few times it will take effort, but switching to English is just a habit you trained over time. Now you train yourself to stay in German until it becomes your routine. It takes persistence, but it gets easier quickly.
😶 “I don’t dare to speak.”
I’ve been there myself. Here’s my story.
Solution: Be brave! Step out of your comfort zone. Each day, choose a word or sentence to say out loud to a real person—whether in a store or on the street—and listen to their response.
If you don’t understand something—it’s okay! Not understanding is part of learning. Each time you try, it gets easier.
Learning German Gets Easier When You Follow These 4 Tips
1. Spot the negative thoughts that hold you back
Turn negative thoughts about learning German into positive ones. Imagine the outcome you want and say it aloud ten times in a row. It really works:
☀️ German is easy, and I enjoy learning it.
☀️ I speak more and more German. Learning becomes easier and faster.
☀️ I dare: Every day I speak German, and I feel good.
2. Focus on your surroundings
Go to a café or a local market. Be among people, even if you don’t fully understand them yet. Observe gestures and facial expressions. Listen carefully—you’ll notice the moment when you suddenly understand things you never did before. Celebrate it!
3. Give yourself credit
Be proud of every little victory in German, even if it’s just one word you learned, understood, or used. Every small step counts.
4. Engage with what interests you
What do you enjoy? Reading crime novels? Gardening? Go to a bookstore and look at German book or magazine covers. Take a photo and translate the title. You don’t need to buy or read the book—just take the first step to engage with German in a way that excites you.
👉 Reading tip: In the current text, you learn about the mental blocks that can keep you from learning German easily. In our article Is German Hard to Learn? 4 Practical Tips to Make It Much Easier you learn strategies you can integrate into your daily routine to make German much easier for you.
Avoid These 3 Mistakes
1. Don’t get stuck translating everything into English
Many learners insist that everything must have an exact English translation. For example: “Wie geht’s dir?” – “Mir geht’s gut.” The problem for most learners is to say the phrase “Mir geht’s gut” correctly, and instead they say “Ich bin gut”:
🤯 Scenario 1: Many automatically say “I am good,” which is incorrect. It is a literal translation from English, but in German we say it differently.
🕵️♀️ Scenario 2: You focus so much on finding the English equivalent that you forget to learn. Translation ≠ learning.
Direct translations help with individual words (especially at A1–A2), but not with full sentences. Every language has its own rules.
2. Asking “Why?”
Example: Why do we say “Mir geht’s gut” in German? Asking “why” doesn’t help. English is not the rulebook for German. German has it’s own words, phrases and sentence grammar. The same applies for any other language as well.
3. Thinking “German is harder than English”
I hear this all the time! It’s a misleading mindset. Most people learned English as a first foreign language, often as kids or teenagers. English neurons are therefore more established, which makes it feel easier. German is usually learned later in life, and your “German neurons” are still forming. It only seems harder—but that doesn’t make it inherently so.
If you follow these tips, learning German won’t feel difficult anymore.
It becomes even easier in our courses: small groups with a maximum of 8 students, lots of speaking from day one, and interactive learning methods we’ve developed to make speaking German completely natural.
German language course (2 mornings per week) ⚡ Frankfurt intensive German course ⚡ German evening class Frankfurt Main
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