Mark Twain's essay on German (an interesting read )

1.A dog is "der Hund"; a woman is "die Frau"; a horse is "das Pferd"; now you put that dog in the genitive case, and is he the same dog he was before? No, sir; he is "des Hundes"; put him in the dative case and what is he? Why, he is "dem Hund." Now you snatch him into the accusative case and how is it with him? Why, he is "den Hunden." But suppose he happens to be twins and you have to pluralize him- what then? Why, they'll swat that twin dog around through the 4 cases until he'll think he's an entire international dog-show all in is own person. I don't like dogs, but I wouldn't treat a dog like that- I wouldn't even treat a borrowed dog that way. Well, it's just the same with a cat. They start her in at the nominative singular in good health and fair to look upon, and they sweat her through all the 4 cases and the 16 the's and when she limps out through the accusative plural you wouldn't recognize her for the same being. Yes, sir, once the German language gets hold of a cat, it's goodbye cat. That's about the amount of it.- Mark Twain's Notebook

2.Never knew before what eternity was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German.- Notebook #14, 11/1877 - 7/1878      (Hahaha :D die Wahrheit)

3.How charmed I am when I overhear a German word which I understand!- Letter to W. D. Howells, 5/4/1878

Personally I feel German is both tough and easy.
Tough because,

• genders of nouns
• there is a fixed word order
• 4 cases

Relatively easy because,

• It is a logic based language. Loaded with rules and logic. Eg: Verb order etc
• Lot of words are similar to English: eg: Family is die Familie or House is das Haus.

“Deutsche Sprache, Schwere Sprache” (“German language, hard language”) is a phrase German speakers use to acknowledge the challenges of learning the EU’s most widely spoken mother tongue. But is German really any tougher to learn than other languages? Well that depends on your linguistic background, on your interest, reasons as to why you are learning etc.

PS: The only normal way to begin  speaking in  a new language is to begin speaking badly.

-Greg Thomson