What next after French?

March 25, 2008 8:38 AM

Is there any point learning German?

So I'm coming to the end of a year in France, and I'm keen to begin learning a new language sometime this year. I've thought for a long time that it was going to be German but I've read a few things recently that have begun to change my mind.

My major concern is that lot of Germans speak very good English, which makes it both pointless and hard to learn. Nothing annoys/frustrates/depresses me more than trying to speak to people in a foreign language only for them to switch into English. I recently went to Spain and found that hardly anyone speaks English there, a joy that contrasts markedly with my experiences in Northern France. What are your experiences trying to learn German as an English speaker? I found this which gaveme hope, but it's from a biased source.

Secondly I learn that German isn't very popular as a second language. I had thought learning German would open up large parts of Eastern Europe to me, but I read recently that English is more popular there now, and that Russian was the former second language of choice. This table gives me hope too, saying that 14% of EU citizens speak German as a second language, but I suspect those people already know English as well. Anyone ever tried travelling around Europe using German?

German attracts me for a lot of reasons. I like the culture, the peacenik eco-hippiness of the place, and that it's just a short ride on the train from Britain (where I live). But is it worth the trouble of learning the language?

(If I were to give up on German I'd be looking at Spanish, which doesn't really interest me, or Russian, which I'm afraid will be too hard/cold/far-away.)

posted by greytape to writing & language (34 comments total)

I speak some high school German. You're right, people you encounter in Germany are more likely to speak English than people in France, or Spain. Doesn't mean they don't appreciate your effort to speak German. If German interests you, learn it! There's some lovely writing in German. Then again Spanish will probably get you farther; not just in Spain, but in Latin America.

The Eastern Europeans I know (Hungarians, mostly) may speak some Russian but don't want to. Not exactly a good memory for many of them.
posted by Nelson at 8:41 AM on March 25, 2008

My major concern is that lot of Germans speak very good English, which makes it both pointless and hard to learn.

I ran into a lot of Germans who didn't speak English on my visits there, I'm it will be useful.
posted by jedrek at 8:44 AM on March 25, 2008

As a German minor, learning German is actually tons of fun! It's way easier to learn than French, and it's far easier to understand spoken German than spoken French. I lost interest in Spanish in High School. I suggest that you shouldn't approach a language as "is it worth it or not", but if you're interested in the culture, then learning German is a great way to increase that knowledge! you can also impress people by saying "hey, I speak Xnumber of languages!" Learning a new language, whether it's a comonly used one or not, is always worth it in, i.m.o.
posted by Planet F at 8:47 AM on March 25, 2008

Yes.
posted by billtron at 8:55 AM on March 25, 2008

Learn Mandarin instead.... I believe it's the second most spoken language in Ireland, if that's any indication of its usefulness. It will also be great for your future business endeavors.
posted by Grither at 9:01 AM on March 25, 2008 [1 favorite]

Three anecdotes...

(1) I was planning to travel through Germany with a buddy of mine and so I told my coworker I was interested in learning some phrases. She's German but moved to the US as soon as she was old enough to do it, so I figured she could give me some tips, but instead she just said, "Why? Everybody in Germany speaks English." I wasn't too surprised she'd say that-- she once said that she was in the Berlin Airport and spoke English the entire time, and she didn't even try to let on that she understood what everyone else was speaking. Maybe she's an odd case because of her background, but a native speaker of German basically dissuaded me from trying.

(2) When I was actually traveling through Germany we passed through a lot of small, out of the way towns, some of which we tried to order food in or get a room in. Some of the people there are not used to seeing a lot of tourists, but even their cursory knowledge of grade-school English was much better than my meager collection of last-minute whatever-I-could-pick-up German words. It managed to work out, but whatever you know would definitely help you out off the beaten path.

(3) Even more off the beaten path: I was in the Czech Republic, at a restaurant so out of the way from the tourist path that nothing was printed in English and no one who worked there spoke English. (And I knew zero Czech.) From what I can tell the waiter asked me if I understood German (or Deutsch) but I didn't, really. Eventually we worked this out by having a translator over the phone! But knowing some German could help in out of the way places in other countries, too.
posted by lou at 9:03 AM on March 25, 2008

People are going to talk to you in the way they feel will best express their message to you; regardless of your claimed proficiency in their language (which can be frustrating). That said, I think it's worth thinking about why, and how much, you'd be using the language. If you're going for Germany for tourism purposes, you'll need different tools and language than, say, someone who wants to read German academic journals but not speak the language that much, or someone who's going to be moving there for work.

What about continuing to study French, but in a less English-proficient place? I imagine that more rural areas of France, and much of the Francophone world outside of Europe or North America, would have a much higher percentage of people with little/no English proficiency, which could really deepen your own French-language proficiency.

Kudos to you for wanting to continue learning!
posted by mdonley at 9:07 AM on March 25, 2008

I disagree that German is easier than French, spoken or written- in fact many English speakers can pick up on written French much more easily. French doesn't have "Verb am Ende," for heaven's sake.

I'd recommend studying German if you're going to be travelling a lot in Germany (or Austria, less so Switzerland) or, of course, living there. But I say this as somebody who studied German for 6 years from junior high to college, and who adores the language: I wish I had chosen another language when I was a kid. I didn't take French because, at my middle school, no boys did, and I was terrified of being made fun of. We didn't have Spanish then, believe it or not (and I grew up in a heavily Hispanic part of the US). But if I'd taken French, the number of places I could use it would have been huge- never mind the fact that I emigrated to Canada when I was 34 and could REALLY have made use of French to move to and work in, say, Ottawa. Spanish of course is an incredibly useful language too... anyway, what I'm saying is, German is great, and it's fulfilling to learn any language and great for visiting one of the tiny number of countries where it's the lingua franca (and I spoke German to Germans on my last trip in Oct 2007 and they were very gracious about speaking it with me- complimentary, too, very nice); but I still wish I'd made a different choice when I was 13.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 9:07 AM on March 25, 2008

ethnomethodologist: I disagree that German is easier than French, spoken or written- in fact many English speakers can pick up on written French much more easily. French doesn't have "Verb am Ende," for heaven's sake.

yes, German doesn't have the verb am Ende, but Germans pronounce all the syllables of their words, whereas French tends to contain a great deal of slang, no matter which type of accent they're speaking with. I learned French from a very young age, and my French is almost perfect, and I STILL have more difficulty sometimes understanding spoken French than spoken German.
posted by Planet F at 9:14 AM on March 25, 2008

You will never find a language more popular than English (well, possibly some people from China or the majority of the Americas would disagree with me there), but even basic german is fairly useful, more so the further east you go. And German is relatively easy to pick up - even I have some, and I am alround awful at picking up languages.

Plus people like it when you try, though that's mainly the French, and it sounds like you have that covered.
posted by Artw at 9:18 AM on March 25, 2008

One of the things I enjoyed most about studying German in undergrad (aside from just learning another language) was that it really helped English make a lot more sense. I had studied some Latin previously in HS and early undergrad, and that helped illuminate some of the Romantic bits of English. But as soon as I got into German, everything in English basically clicked. I found that to be quite enlightening and enjoyable, but maybe that's not your cup of tea.

The other consideration I'd have in choosing to study another language is what your interests are in general. If you're interested in literature, philosophy, poetry, music, etc., there's a ton of amazing works written in German that haven't been translated well (if at all). If you're just looking for a travel language, focusing on French will give you quite a bit of mileage in Africa and parts of the Caribbean, while Spanish enables most of Central/South America.
posted by Nelsormensch at 9:26 AM on March 25, 2008

FWIW, German is spoken widely in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, as they get loads of German tourists. My dodgy high school German served me well there in 2000 before they were big Brit tourist destinations. It's relatively similar to English in a ton of ways, so it's pretty easy to pick up, especially if you're immersed.
posted by Happy Dave at 9:40 AM on March 25, 2008

It depends on what you plan to do with yourself. If you're going to travel in Germany or possibly Eastern Europe it would help to some degree. Even if people speak English it helps you read signs an understand what's going on around you.

However, as a language that will get you the most "bang for your buck" German isn't a great choice. English is the default "travel language" and, I suspect, is more often learned as a second language in many places especially outside Europe.

Mandarin can be helpful in China, I took classes before going there, but there are so many dialects that you won't be universally understood. I've gone to China three times now and notice English being more spoken, often by teenagers. It's poor English generally but in a few years I suspect it will become more common. There are many Chinese/Taiwanese immigrants around the world so it's possible to use those skills in other places. For example, an English man was staying in my hostel in Kyrgyzstan and was having trouble finding something. He spoke fluent Chinese so he went into a Chinese restaurant and asked them for help.

French is spoken in many places in Africa where they colonized. Madagascar's government uses French as it's first language and most people speak French as their second language. This can also be found in Rwanda and West Africa.

The only place I've been to where German was being learned was Myanmar (Burma). I was there in 2005 and the tourists were overwhelmingly German so menus were printed in German and the little kids learned to beg for candy/pens in German instead of English. I actually found this to be the same of French in Uzbekistan... there were many French tourists so the local adapted.
posted by Bunglegirl at 10:03 AM on March 25, 2008

Wikipedia gives some facts about German as a foreign language:

German is the main language of about 90–95 million people in Europe (as of 2004), or 13.3% of all Europeans, being the second most spoken native language in Europe after Russian, above French (66.5 million speakers in 2004) and English (64.2 million speakers in 2004). It is therefore the most spoken first language in the EU. German is the third most taught foreign language worldwide, including the United States;^[19] it is the second most known foreign language in the EU.^[20] It is one of the official languages of the European Union, and one of the three working languages of the European Commission, along with English and French.

Since you know English and French already, learning German as well would allow you to speak with very nearly everyone in Europe.

Some commenters have suggested that learning German is unnecessary for traveling in Germany because everyone there speaks English. It is true that most Germans speak some English, but many speak little or none. In any case, Germans (like most people) are happier and more comfortable conversing with a foreigner in German than in the foreigner's language. In my experience, otherwise dour clerks and service workers would positively light up when they realized that they could easily communicate with me in German. So, I recommend learning it if you have an interest in traveling in Germany or Austria (the German-speaking parts of Switzerland being another matter).
posted by jedicus at 10:09 AM on March 25, 2008

Yeah, most Germans speak a little English (and in cities, many of them are fairly fluent.) The same goes for much of the rest of Europe these days, though: English is the language you're most apt to share with a random European. However, your experiences going through a foreign country using English rather than using their native language will be very different. I'm currently travelling with my English-speaking family in Germany, and man, things are so much easier (and we get treated so much better) when I use my German. Furthermore, people from Eastern European countries and even Scandinavians seem to more likely to speak German as a second or third language - French and Spanish aren't as useful within Europe.

I've taken varying amounts of German, Spanish, Latin, and French, and I've enjoyed the German the most, by far. No regrets about knowing it better than slightly more common languages like French or Spanish: I've found German easier to learn and more entertaining, and it's been more useful to me than the other languages. I'm currently living and working in Germany, and it's been challenging and incredible. Furthermore, there's a huge amount of culture available in German (and often only in German.) And while I too get very annoyed by people switching to English when they hear my accent or not-quite-perfect grammar, it honestly hasn't happened too much to me here. My impression is that Germans are perhaps more tolerant of mistakes in their language than the French are.

If you're interested in Germany and German culture (and it sounds like you are), German will be useful. Even if you were interested in it primarily as a travel language, it would still be worth it, and a language that would complement French pretty well.
posted by ubersturm at 10:43 AM on March 25, 2008

Obviously German will be useful in German, Austria, and Switzerland. There are many people in those countries who don't speak English at all or not very well--working class and older people especially. If you just visit as a tourist or do professional work it wouldn't be as useful, maybe, but if you ever live in Mitteleuropa you'll need to learn the language.

I learned the language as an adult and found it fairly easy to do so. And I do think learning a language is a great, mind-broadening experience.
posted by aerotive at 10:45 AM on March 25, 2008

Germans and Austrians are people who like precision, and many of them feel they can't speak English well enough so they are uncomfortable trying. (And when they try, you find they're actually not bad at all.) When you try to speak german to them, it really relaxes them with you because you are making an effort. This has been the case with many people I've met there. They're so impressed that you've tried to learn german they will try harder to speak to you.

German has a lot of ties to english so there are some things that make it easy. It also has a lot of crazy articles and word combinations that make it tough. If you ever go to Turkey, you'll find that some people understand German far better than English there. My German studies also helps me to understand little bits of other germanic languages too.

All of that said, it's a gutteral language and I hate to admit, it gives me a headache sometimes. And if I could go back I would've learned french instead because while it was good for my travels I've met many, many more french people in California than germans. I could've been speakng French on a much more regular basis in life than I will ever be using my german... which is slowly fading away.
posted by miss lynnster at 10:58 AM on March 25, 2008

As a German native speaker: Why bother? German is basically medieval English evolved differently. Everyone under 50 who speaks German speaks English as well. I'd rather try Spanish (easy) or Mandarin (hard). Spanish for size of audience (plus a foot in the door for Italian or Portuguese), Mandarin for the experience of something entirely different, a chance at communication in China, and the fact that Chinese people apparently are everywhere in the world.
posted by themel at 11:11 AM on March 25, 2008

I have been a student of German for over 40 years now, having started as a Sophomore in High School in September 1967. Today I participate in a German Discussion Group once a week at a local vocational High School. It was at one point my major in college (until I actually went to Germany).

I have to tell you there aren't a lot of reasons to study German anymore. It used to be a common second language among Eastern Europeans, which could make it fun. In my experience, the easiest way to learn a language is to learn it with other non-native speakers with whom you share no other language. That's how I learned French: by conversing with Africans and Japanese who spoke it. In the 70s, I met a number of Eastern Europeans with whom I could only communicate in German, and that was fun.

If you are a scholar of Philosophy, Art History, or the Holocaust, it probably makes sense to learn German. As an aid to travel, it is not nearly as useful as French (or Spanish) or even Japanese, which is extremely difficult but extremely useful if you ever go to Japan.
posted by thomas144 at 11:16 AM on March 25, 2008

mdonley is right about people in (some parts of) rural France not speaking English. I live part time in Languedoc and the only people in my little town who own to speaking *any* English are the tobacconist who insists I speak French to him (and who's liberal in his corrections), and a few British expats.

There is a Languedoc accent. The smiles in my town get broader as I put "ng"s on the end of words terminating in n's; and so do the smiles in Paris, but for different reasons.
posted by jet_silver at 11:22 AM on March 25, 2008

On the topic of the comparative difficulty of French and German, the US Department of State's Foreign Service Institute ranks French as a Category I language, meaning that it takes on average 575-600 hours of classroom instruction to attain "general professional proficiency" in speaking and writing. German, at 750 hours, is in between Categories I and II.

Mandarin, which some people above have suggested as an alternative to German, is a Category III language: 2200 hours of classroom instruction, or 88 weeks if you have class for 25 hours a week (and study for 3-4 hours a day), as students at the Foreign Service institute do. Assuming you're not intending learning your next language to be a full-time occupation for several years, or to take an age of studying an hour or two a day, I think German is a much better option.
posted by Cucurbit at 11:27 AM on March 25, 2008

By the way, if you ultimately decide against both German and Spanish and want an easier alternative to Russian, you might consider Portuguese. I don't know why Spanish doesn't interest you -- if, say, you think it'd be too easy, Portuguese would be no better -- but Portugal is fairly near home for you and Brazil is very cool.
posted by Cucurbit at 12:00 PM on March 25, 2008

Learn Mandarin instead.... I believe it's the second most spoken language in Ireland, if that's any indication of its usefulness. It will also be great for your future business endeavors.

Interestingly enough, that's the same reasoning my middle/high schools used when they offered (pushed) German in the 90's, as Germany was going to be our next big economic partner.... So remember that times change rapidly.

There are plenty of benefits to and reasons for learning German. German is fun. As an English speaker, it'll be super easy. Plenty of people speak it. It will make you understand English grammar, syntax—even spelling—better. If you ever want to study philosophy, it'll basically be invaluable.

I do wish, though, that I had studied Spanish as well (which, hilariously, was not even offered in my middle school).
posted by General Malaise at 12:46 PM on March 25, 2008

German is great fun. If nothing else, when the Fat Lady sings, you can join the chorus--until the ushers drag you out.

One tidbit about the value of having some German when in Germany--German sometimes tends to create compound words for new things rather than borrowing them. English speakers can often muddle through labels and signs in other languages because the vocabulary comes from a common source, often Latin. But if you saw a highway sign pointing to the Flughafen, would you know where it was going? If you saw a label on a soft drink that said ohne Kohlensäure, would you know what it was?
posted by gimonca at 1:03 PM on March 25, 2008

I live in New England. Consider Portuguese, it's spoken all around the world.
posted by lemuel at 1:52 PM on March 25, 2008

I think you should learn the language that attracts you the most, and it sounds like that's German. With that said, Spanish would get you a lot of languages for your effort. I learned Spanish, and from there it was a short hop to getting enough Portuguese to understand the news and get basic info. Now I can understand a surprising amount of Italian, Galician, and even Romanian.
posted by PatoPata at 1:56 PM on March 25, 2008

Consider Portuguese, it's spoken all around the world.

I'm a big fan of Portuguese, but it's at best only spoken in small pockets around the world.

I have no personal history with it, but I think you may want to reconsider Russian. It's one of the 10 most widely-spoken languages in the world and is probably less hard than you think, AND it's regaining prominence, AND Russia has a pretty remarkable cultural history (which you can sample on a quick flight there during summer, if you're worried about the cold/far away bits), AND learning a new alphabet is a rare and fantastic mental exercise.

You know...I think I've just talked myself into it.
posted by kittyprecious at 2:13 PM on March 25, 2008

I found my high-school level German fantastically useful in Turkey. East of a certain point, everyone stops knowing any English and knows German instead.
posted by pompomtom at 2:19 PM on March 25, 2008

Russian would also be very useful in Russia, where not only does nobody know English, but no-one seems to have the miming and interpretation skills (or patience) to interpret what non-Russian speakers are after when an interpreter is not about. Generally if you don't understand what they say the first time the response will be to just repeat it again, louder and faster.
posted by Artw at 5:34 PM on March 25, 2008

FOr historical and academic purposes, French and German are practically the whole shebang (well, except latin & ancient greek) - so if you have any interest in european philosophy, literature or history, it is a great language to have familiarity with. Also, learning another anglo-saxon language could be very interesting as a way to expand your understanding of english.

You will get further with languages you actually enjoy learning, even if they aren't the most commonly spoken ones. If you have a love for German, take advantage of it, because the more languages you learn, the easier you will find it to pick up the next one (my half-bro speaks about 7 languages and says once you get past the third, it is no longer a struggle). If you try to force yourself to learn a language you don't really like that much because you think it will be more useful, you will very likely find it harder to make progress, and just give up on it.

So start with the ones that interest you (for whatever reason), or seem intuitive to you, even if they aren't the objectively most popular, because it is better to learn any language than to bore yourself to death with somethingsomething declension case whatsit oh who cares, I'll just speak English.
posted by mdn at 6:57 PM on March 25, 2008

Hi, I'm an American living in Germany (Berlin), and I can tell you about my experience here.

This idea that most Germans speak English is not really that true, not like, for instance, the idea that all Dutch speak English, or all Swedes speak English. A lot of Germans speak some English. Most German businessmen or educated people speak good English. A much lower percentage speak very good English or are fluent.

They are, however, very polite and will try to speak what English they can. That certainly gave me the impression that most people speak English fairly well. You can get around using only English, but the truth is, there are a lot of people here who have only a basic command of English. After 4 months of immersion, I will quite often meet people whose English is not as good as my own German -- but if all you did was ask them for directions on the street, you'd think they spoke good English.

This is not that surprising considering movies and television is in general dubbed (though it is amusing, and telling about the next generation, that MTV doesn't seem to be). English is the "language of business", and most my coworkers speak very good English, yet still German is the main language. And then there are the people who speak Russian, Spanish, and French, and Italian as foreign languages, but not English.

It shows how English was not systematically taught, and is still not that commonly practiced. A German who speaks English well enough to talk about life, and read literature and watch films in English, is someone who has put a lot of extra effort into learning English.

So, I would say that it really depends on what you want the foreign language for. If you only want to learn a little bit, to converse a little with German speakers, then it might not be that useful. If your goal is to understand conversational German, that would be a useful thing.
posted by cotterpin at 1:30 AM on March 26, 2008

Germans may speak english but they don't always want to, nor will random people always admit to speaking english, even if they do. So if you're going to live there or in austria or in switzerland or whatever, you should learn the language.
posted by beerbajay at 2:33 AM on March 26, 2008

Thanks to everyone for your reponses, some really interesting stuff here, too many to mark as best answers.
My fundamental problem is that I really want to learn a lingua franca, of which there is really only English. The other languages I have considered (German, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese) are at best semi-lingua francas. Spanish or Russian would get the nod, but I have no plans to travel extensively/exclusively in the Americas or Central Asia and Arabic and Chinese require too much investment of time.
Therefore I have concluded that I should abandon the urge to learn a lingua franca, and content myself with exploring just one culture, its cities, people and art, namely: Deutschland.
Chinese will probably emerge as a new lingua franca in fifty years or so, but I'll just get my kids to learn it for me.
posted by greytape at 5:20 AM on March 26, 2008

Learning German was useful for me while living in Germany, even though it is true that most Germans speak great English. First off, if you're living there and you're in a room full of Germans, you feel like a real jerk if everybody has to speak their second language just for you. Second, a lot of immigrants speak German as a second language and don't speak English, particularly in the service industry. And, most important, Germans want to do everything official in German. So your lease, visa, etc all go a lot more smoothly if you speak German.

If you're not planning to move to Germany/Austria/Switzerland, though, I can't see it being super useful. Fun nonetheless.
posted by atomly at 10:31 AM on March 26, 2008