this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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Funny though German has the more complex rules on the surface, English becomes the more complicated when counting all the exceptions.
English exceptions aren't so bad, you just need to know that there's a ton of loan words, what their origin was, when it was anglicized, and which country's preferred version you're learning. If it's not a loan word it's either standard or somewhat re-latined to maintain class hierarchy.
Oha, that's it?
Do you have a source for this? Also, what sort of "exceptions" do you mean? German has cognates of most of the English inherited grammatical exceptions, and has many more classes of its own that aren't reflected in English.
No I don't have a source, it's what my German teacher claimed. So maybe not an unbiased source?
As someone who learned English as my second language and German third, they both have exceptions and the only thing German is easier than English is that you can spell a word after hearing it, while English it can really be anything.
Everything else though? German is insanely harder, I don't think I could get it to the level of my English if I studied for 10 years (been about 4 years of studying it now)
Same here, English 2nd German 3rd. I'll never get nearly as good at German for many reasons. Mostly I'm way more exposed to English, and I use it every day.
What exceptions?
through trough tough bough bought
I'm a native English speaker and even for me that list gets rougher the longer I look at it - pun intended.
mouse mice, ox oxen...