If you are looking to learn a European language to improve your career prospects, German is the best bet. German is the most spoken native language in the EU, the third most taught foreign language in the world and one of the three working languages of the EU institutions. Even though the German economy is going through a relatively static phase, it is still the third biggest in the world, and the most powerful in the EU. German companies such as BMW, Siemens, Lufthansa, SAP, Bosch, Allianz, Deutsche Bank, Bayer etc all have dominant roles in their respective sectors.

As well as being very successful at industry and business, German speakers have also made many contributions to European and world culture and science. 10 Nobel prizes for literature have been awarded to German, Austrian, and Swiss German authors, and masters such as Goethe, Mann, Kafka and Grass have to be read in the original German to be really understood. The German influence on other fields such as music, psychology, economics and philosophy has also been profound thanks to the likes of Mozart, Freud, Marx and Kant. German speakers have probably done more to shape the way we see and understand the world than any others, French and English included.

There are about 110 million native German speakers worldwide, and another 18m non-native speakers. German is the primary language in Germany (obviously), Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, in two-thirds of Switzerland, while there are also small German speaking communities in Belgium, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Russia, the US, Argentina and Brazil. German is also increasingly useful since the entrance of more Central and Eastern European countries into the EU, where German is often the second most spoken language, more important even than English. So whether you are planning on going skiing in the Swiss Alps, clubbing in Berlin or sampling the high culture of imperial Vienna, a little Deutsch will go a long way.

Students interested in taking a German course have plenty of options. There are many different types of courses available, at all levels from a weekly absolute beginner course up to professional translating programmes. Some courses concentrate more on conversation skills, while others are aimed at business professionals who need to use German in their work. There are also distance-learning programmes where you learn at home in your own time, or "immersion" courses where you actually travel to Germany and take an intensive three-week course. Qualifications range from basic certificates of completion to the Leaving Cert and even third level degree courses.

German has perhaps a reputation among some students as being a difficult language to learn. It is fair to say that German grammar is a bit more complex than French or Spanish. The mix of four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative) and three genders (male, female and neuter) can take time to get your head around. However all these rules can also work in your favour, once you have worked them out. German words are spelled phonetically and pronounced as they are written, and sentence structure tends to be very rigid, which means that once you have managed to reach a certain proficiency in the language, you can then improve rapidly.

It is probably a good idea not to get too hung up on the grammar and the different rules at the start. Getting to grips with basic vocab and useful phrases is more important for beginners. You might make the odd grammatical error while speaking but people will still understand you - 'me go home now' gets your point across. It takes time before language rules become second nature to speakers - but learning by reading, speaking and listening is much better than memorising lists of rules out of context.

If you already know English well, then you have an advantage when it comes to learning German. The two languages share many words. German and English are both members of the same language family and if you go back far enough they were once pretty much the same language. Examples of exact matches include best, finger, winter, intelligent and singer; while there are thousands of words which look and sound close enough to make understanding them easy. Examples include Gott (God), gut (good), Haus (house), Milch (milk), Nacht (night) etc etc. Unfortunately there are also false friends to watch out for e.g. 'bald' means 'soon' in English, 'elf' means 'eleven' and 'Messer' means 'knife'. In the main, however, the similarities make learning German relatively easy for English native speakers.

If you are thinking of taking a German nightcourse there are plenty of ways you can prepare and practice on your own. These are especially useful to people who maybe learned German in school or did a course a few years back, and are looking to refresh their memories. Renting German language films on DVD (we highly recommend Goodbye Lenin), listening to German radio online, and reading children's books in German, are all ways you can improve on your own. The online magazine Deutsch Perfekt is specifically written with learners in mind; it features basic vocab and relatively interesting articles about Germany, with hypertext explanations of some more difficult words.

Obviously Nicourses.com would never resort to crude national stereotyping, however we are willing to point out the possibility that taking a German nightcourse will make you more organised, effective and successful. Other benefits will include increased employability, access to classic music, literature and films and the ability to converse loquaciously when you inevitably end up at a Central European bierfest. There is also the great satisfaction you get from learning another language. It is all sehr gut.