Which is harder?

Which is harder to acquire? The English tense system for German native speakers or the German case and ending system for English native speakers?

DEFINITELY the latter. I'm just speaking out of my blowhole because I can't testify for the German native speakers, but as an English native speaker (almost), I can say that learning the German cases is the most difficult thing about German. I know Vietnamese and Spanish, and I'm learning French and German, and I must say that German is the most difficult language because of all those cases. Making nouns plural in German is also very difficult! It's frustrating.


Meesh.

Hey Meesh, if you really think German is very difficult, you should say Polish is twenty times more difficult than German when you try it.Try it once.

Haha, really?! I now have a higher regard for Polish speakers. What exactly makes Polish harder though?

Meesh

The case system in Polish is even more complex, because they have more cases, and you have to change each and every word based on the case--unlike in German where it's mostly just the articles.
Lithuanian is also really hard. Check this out:

Nominative profesorius profesoriai
Genitive profesoriaus profesoriý
Dative profesoriui profesoriams
Accusative profesoriý profesorius
Instrumental profesoriumi profesoriais
Locative profesoriuje profesoriuose
Vocative profesoriau profesoriai

Estonian also has a lot of cases, but it's considered easier than Lithuanian and Polish.
example:
Nominative uus restoran new restaurant
Genitive uue restorani of the new restaurant
Partitive uut restorani new restaurant
Illative uuesse restoranisse into the new restaurant
Inessive uues restoranis in the new restaurant
Elative uuest restoranist out of the new restaurant
Allative uuele restoranile to the new restaurant
Adessive uuel restoranil by the new restaurant
Ablative uuelt restoranilt from the new restaurant
Translative uueks restoraniks for (as) the new restaurant
Terminative uue restoranini as far as the new restaurant
Essive uue restoranina as the new restaurant
Abessive uue restoranita without the new restaurant
Comitative uue restoraniga with the new restaurant

Thanks so much for showing me that. It's VERY informative. I thought German was hard, so I was getting a bit discouraged. But in comparison to Polish, Lithuanian, and Estonian, German cases seem like nothing.

Meesh.

By the way, do you know how many German cases there are? And can you please give me examples of each?

There are four cases in German, them being the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases; however, many German dialects lack the genitive case, and some have even merged the accusative and dative cases. Nouns themselves do not normally directly inflect for case in German, besides that singular masculine and neuter nouns get /(@)s/ <(e)s> added in the genitive, dative plurals get /n/ <n> added, weak masculine nouns have /(@)n/ <(e)n> added in all cases in the singular except for nominative case, and some short masculine or neuter nouns get /@/ <e> added in the dative in formal language. Rather, it is personal pronouns, determiners (articles), and adjectives that normally inflect for case across the board. For more information on the inflectional paradigms of German determiners and adjectives, go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_grammar

Thank you so much, Travis. You used a lot of terms that I didn't understand, but I could use wikipedia to look up the terms. And thanks for the link--I'm sure that it would explain a lot too.

Meesh.

Well, I would have thought ultimately the English tense system is harder, as the German cases and endings involve exact rules, which although they are complex, can be learnt, and once you have learnt them, there is a clear right or wrong. I would have thought the factors involved in which tense to use in English were much more subtle ( I realise this might well also be the case in other languages, but I am comparing English and German, because for the most part the German tense system is very straightforward, much more so than English). Even after years of living in an English speaking country, many Germans continue to frequently get the tenses wrong. In fact I have read the assertion that it is almost impossible for them to truly acquire the system because it involves such a resetting of their thought processes.