Compared to other languages… If those other languages are Romantic, North Germanic, Dutch, Afrikaans, or Frisian. A majority of other languages are typically considered more difficult for people who only speak English.
That being said, I found Russian way easier than German at first, but that quickly stops being the case… German shares a lot of semantic/syntactic similarities with English so you can reasonably assume that a lot of German constructions will easily translate to English, for Russian though it’s more unfamiliar and you have to put more effort into thinking Russian-y. The main thing that made German way harder at first is German declensions… ugh… Russian has a complex declension system but it’s extremely regular, while German declensions are pretty irregular and the declension of articles is especially bad because their forms overlap a lot. Adjective declension is similarly bad. German word order also fucked with me a lot but it’s decently rigid so you get it quickly.
Compared to other languages… If those other languages are Romantic, North Germanic, Dutch, Afrikaans, or Frisian. A majority of other languages are typically considered more difficult for people who only speak English.
That being said, I found Russian way easier than German at first, but that quickly stops being the case… German shares a lot of semantic/syntactic similarities with English so you can reasonably assume that a lot of German constructions will easily translate to English, for Russian though it’s more unfamiliar and you have to put more effort into thinking Russian-y. The main thing that made German way harder at first is German declensions… ugh… Russian has a complex declension system but it’s extremely regular, while German declensions are pretty irregular and the declension of articles is especially bad because their forms overlap a lot. Adjective declension is similarly bad. German word order also fucked with me a lot but it’s decently rigid so you get it quickly.