Language Profile German
The German language (Deutsch or (die) deutsche Sprache) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family. It is spoken in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, and additionally in Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as in France and Northern Italy, where there are minority groups of German speakers. German is the third most taught foreign language in the English speaking world after French and Spanish. German is the main language of about 90–95 million people in Europe or 13.3% of all Europeans, being the second most spoken native language in Europe after Russian, above French and English. It is therefore the most spoken first language in the EU. It is the second most known foreign language in the EU. The widespread availability of German TV by cable or satellite means that many people are exposed to german entertainment, and due in part to this, 32% of citizens of the EU-15 countries say they can converse in German (either as a mother tongue or as a second or foreign language). German was once, and still remains to some extent, a lingua franca in Central, Eastern and Northern Europe.
Learning German is easy because:
German is a part of the West Germanic language family and is much like English and Dutch, making it easier for English- speaking people to learn. . A lot of the vocabulary in German is related to English, although English has a much larger vocabulary, as it is formed from Germanic and Romance languages. Expressions such as Guten Morgen (Good morning) show the similarity between the two languages.
Learning German is challenging because:
The noun case system of German can be quite difficult to grasp for people used to languages without a noun case system. German nouns inflect into one of four cases: nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative. Nouns can be divided into three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. Word endings sometimes reveal grammatical gender; for instance, nouns ending in ...ung(-ing), ...e,...schaft(-ship), ...keit or ...heit(-hood) are feminine, while nouns ending in ...chen or ...lein (diminutive forms) are neuter and nouns ending in ...ismus (-ism) are masculine. Others are controversial, sometimes depending on the region in which it is spoken. Additionally, ambiguous endings exist, such as ...er (-er), e.g. Feier (feminine), engl. celebration, party, and Arbeiter (masculine), engl. labourer. Sentences can usually be reorganized to avoid a misunderstanding. German has a system of cases for verbs, and when helping verbs are used, the main part of the verb must be moved to the end of the sentence. For example, "Someone has stolen my car" is Jemand hat mein Auto gestohlen (Someone has my car stolen) or, "Someone called me last night" is Jemand hat mich letzte Nacht angerufen. There are many different dialects according to location. The variation among the German dialects is considerable, with only the neighboring dialects being mutually intelligible. Some dialects are not even intelligible to people who only know standard German. However, all German dialects belong to the dialect continuum of High German and Low Saxon languages, so they follow the same roots and rules. Like English, German allows arbitrarily long compounds, but these are rare. They can cause difficulties with pronunciation and word order, as the compounds need to be put together, as in Herzkreislaufwiederbelebung ( C.P.R, or literally heart-circle-run-again-enlivenment), or Hoechsgeschwindigkeitsbegrenzung (maximum speed limit).
German with Cactus:
Cactus provides German language training as 1:1 programs, closed groups for in-house company training, full-immersion courses, online courses, self-study, and on public evening courses.