<p>The only tricky aspect of German are suffixes. All nouns, pronouns and verbs have suffixes that need to be matched to gender, verb tense, grammatical case and sentence position. Mismatched suffixes are the easiest way to spot a non-native speaker and something that even immigrants who have been in the country for decades still screw up occasionally. </p>
<p>But you don’t need to learn German to perfection to be understood. Germans will understand you perfectly fine even if you get an occasional suffix wrong, and you will be able to read and understand spoken German with a bit of practice. Getting that practice ahead of time will make the transition to a lecture hall a bit easier; that’s why I would suggest spending the summer summer before the beginning of your first semester in Germany. </p>
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Trust me, they do.</p>