Advice needed: should I study German or Italian?

I say study whichever you're more interested in. Sorry, no personal experience with either here, but I've always been interested in German/Germany, so I'd go with that, even if it is slightly more challenging.

 

I took German all through high school, and it is honestly not that difficult at all. The only thing that may take some time is learning the different versions of the word "the" (there are masculine, feminine and neutral cases for words and those cases have certain rules for when they change into even more different versions of the word "the").

For example, masculine words use "der" normally. However, der can change into den, dem and des in certain instances.

Deutsch ist am besten

 

Don't know either language, choose whichever one you like the best. Personally I would love to learn Italian one day since my family comes from Italy.

 

I like them both, although I would personally choose German over Italian.

 

English is Germanic in its roots, so in that sense, it may be easier, but Italian and Spanish are both Romance languages, so if you know Spanish well enough, Italian should be pretty easy too.

I would personally go with Italian.

 

I would suggest you take the language you feel most comfortable with (whatever the reasons behind it are) and privately study the other language informally with books you borrow or programs you find online.

 

I was gonna say the same thing, the der, den, dem, des, ein, einer, yadda yadda stuff really confused me a lot and took a while to get used to.

But I recommend German....mostly because it sounds awesome :lol:

 

German and Italian are both easy languages in my opinion...I studied both, along with Arabic, Russian, Latin, and Ancient Greek.

Jonathan mentioned "der, den, des, dem", articles which are the way German nouns indicate case...as a longtime student of Latin, that was easy peasy to me, but a lot of native English speakers have no idea what a grammatical case is. Honestly that's a piece of cake compared to mastering the case endings of languages like Latin, Ancient Greek, and Russian.

I studied German in college, and I also got to practice my German while in Austria (Vienna and Salzburg), though Austrian German is a bit different from Hochdeutsch (standard German).

I actually studied Italian while I was studying abroad in Rome, Italy. It is a beautiful, poetic language. Much more pleasing to the ears than German in my opinion. It is much less rigidly structured than German, there is more freedom and looseness in speaking Italian.

Building a German sentence is like constructing a mathematical equation, while building an Italian sentence is like painting a fine artwork.

Honestly, neither language is that important if you're interested in international relations; if you're interested in global diplomacy I'd suggest Arabic or Russian.

But do you have any plans to visit, maybe even study abroad, in Italy or Germany/Austria? If so that should settle the question. Although average Germans are more likely to be able to speak English than average Italians, so Italian would probably be more useful.

Italian also has the advantage of making it easier to learn other Romance languages. You mention that you are conversational in Spanish already, but there is also French, Portuguese, Romanian, a bunch of other Romance languages, and of course, the original Romance language, Latin. If you're interested at all in Classical studies, definitely go with Italian, it will help you learn Latin and of course will also make it easier to visit Italy where there are so many classical treasures to uncover explore.

I have read that Italian and French are actually two of the most similar languages, they share about 90% of the same vocabulary, even though pronunciations are obviously different.

So I can't give you a clear answer as to whether you should take German or Italian, but I hope my post helps somewhat in making your decision!

 

Since you said that you can speak Spanish, I'd recommend Italian.
I was intermidiate in Japanese before I took up Chinese and I was able to pick it up fairly quickly.

Italian would be easier to pick up since you have experience with Spanish.
German is an awesome language too... but I think you should learn Italian first.

 

It would be wise to choose whichever would be more practical, and convenient in future situations.

While I'm moderately fluent in Italian, I could never seem to grasp Spanish well, seeing as it's not all that similar to Italian. But I took French throughout high school, my girlfriend speaks it fluently, and I involve myself with a lot of French media, so it's been easier for me to grasp. In contrast, having prior knowledge in French would make Italian easier to learn. Which makes sense, since, genealogically, Italian is closer to French than it is to Spanish. If you were to study Italian, you'd find a number of grammatical features that are reflected in French, but not in Spanish.

I obviously can't speak for German (literally), but with that said, Italian would be the easier one to go with.. although you're not concerned about complexities. I second the notion of choosing what happens to interest you more, and would be the more beneficial of the two.

 

Deutsch ist SUUUUUUUUPER GUT

But seriously, English is technically a Germanic language. It's really not that hard to learn German, because half of the words are words you either already know or can probably guess what they mean.

 

In the end, only you can answer the question...

Like others say, what language interests you more?

I am only guessing here, but I guess that Italian would be easier given that you already can speak a Romance language.

When I was young, I studied both French and German. I found French far easier. But German was not the nightmare it's made out to be. Actually, I found German fun.

One other question you might ask: what are the teachers like? German is more complicated than French, but at one point it was actually easier for me because the German teacher was a million times better than the French teacher.

 

I think you have made the right decision. If you have any aspirations to live or work in Europe, you will do better learning German than Italian. As things stand, Germany is the powerhouse of Europe.

 

I hope you enjoy German. As I said, I found it an interesting language.

---------- Post added 3rd Apr 2014 at 12:29 PM ----------

Unless, of course, you plan to work/live in Italy! :lol:

But yes, I'd guess German is probably the more "valuable" language.

 

Italian. I'm kind of biased and you can guess why...

 

Personally, i think Italian is more romantic lol
I'd probably study that

 

Yes, English is a Germanic language....but honestly, at least half of English vocabulary is actually derived from Romance languages, either directly from Latin or from Norman French.

In terms of vocabulary, an English speaker would probably have less trouble picking up Italian vocabulary than picking up German vocabulary.

I mean, even the word "vocabulary" comes from the Latin "vocabularium".

The Italian word for "vocabulary" is "vocabulario".

The German word for "vocabulary" is "Wortschatz".

An English speaker could probably easily figure out an Italian sentence like

"La voce è tranquilla."

"The voice is calm."

..."Voce" resembling English "voice" (which we get from Old French 'voiz') and and "tranquilla" easily resembling English "tranquil", with the same meaning (which we get from Latin "tranquilla").

That same sentence in German would be

"Die Stimme ist ruhig."

No native English speaker who's never studied German would be able to decipher a meaning out of that sentence!


So don't assume that because English is a Germanic language that that would make German vocabulary more similar to English than Italian, if you are an English speaker looking to learn a language with easier vocabulary, Italian is probably a better bet than German!

Even in terms of grammatical structure, the differences between English and German are probably greater than between English and Italian. English and Italian do not have the strict rigid rules about word order in constructing sentences, putting the main verb second and putting the infinitive at the end, crazy things like that which make constructing a German sentence similar to constructing a mathematical equation.

Also German nouns have grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative), indicated by the article, whereas Italian, like English, doesn't have cases.

As a longtime student of Latin, grammatical cases are like second-nature to me, but a lot of my fellow first-year German students were just totally stumped by the idea of like what the hell a "dative case" is. :lol:

Anyway, I've studied both German and Italian, are both fun, useful languages in their own way. I would say Italian is easier and slightly more useful, but both are fairly easy languages to learn, at least from the perspective of someone who has also studied Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, and Arabic.

My own ethnicity is mixed Italian, German, and Finnish, so I have no bias in this debate, other than the fact that I would really love to learn Finnish one day! :icon_wink

 

That's a nice way to put it!

---------- Post added 3rd Apr 2014 at 08:36 PM ----------

I think Italian is sort of a blend of French and Spanish. Sometimes it leans toward French and at other times it leans toward Spanish. One case is that cheese is "formaggio" in Italian and "fromage" in French. On the other hand, house is "casa" in Italian and Spanish, and "maison" in French, but you probably know of the latter example from frequent usage of those words.

---------- Post added 3rd Apr 2014 at 08:39 PM ----------

If you look at it in terms of economics and finding work in Europe, then it would be German. If you look at it in terms of being melodic, then it would be Italian.

You've already picked. I would have gone with Italian. My high school offered Spanish, French, German, and Latin. Latin was out of the question. German seemed foreboding. I then picked French of the remaining two. I was very happy with that decision, though I took Spanish in university.