Germanic languages from the Northern Germanic region include Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Danish that are all considered on the whole to be more difficult to learn that Latin based or Romance languages. Germanic languages include German, Dutch and Afrikaans derived from Dutch. For these reasons there is great synergy and similarity between the various Latin languages especially in terms of sentence structure and grammatical rules. Latin languages are also referred to as Romance languages and originally evolved from Vulgar Latin spoken in the Mediterranean regions during the Roman Empire between the sixth and ninth centuries. To compare each language, French and German in isolation of each other in terms of difficulty, some of the most experienced linguists would attest that German is more difficult due to the German accent and pronunciation as well as complex German grammar rules.ĭifferences in grammar rules may make German more difficult to learn compared with French, but this is mostly because Germanic languages have differing rules that do not apply to the most widely spoken Latin based languages such as French (150 million worldwide speakers), Italian, (60 million worldwide speakers), Portuguese (250 million worldwide speakers) and Spanish (470 million worldwide speakers).

Therefore a student who has learnt French may find learning German fairly accessible. Do the same skills apply? Which language is easier to learn, French or German? The ease of learning one language over another is dependent on various factors.Ī student who has already studied a language other that their Mother tongue is much more likely to be able to adapt to a new language. The Museum of Knowledge team is often asked whether there is a difference between learning one language over another.

Learning german grammar rules