As a native English speaker who studied German, Russian, and Polish, German was much easier to learn than the Slavic languages. The case system is smaller than Russian or Polish, and there are far more cognates which makes learning vocabulary much easier. Also, articles (e.g., "a" and "the") are notoriously difficult for non-native speakers of English, but German is similar enough.
Learning cases is a little hard, and the silly capitalization rules are a hindrance, but probably the most difficult thing in German for most English speakers is waiting for the damn verb to make its appearance. It's harder to guess what it will be than it is for native German speakers.
I would guess that learning German would be easier than English for a native speaker of a Slavic language, though, precisely because syntax plays such a critical role in English, which has only the barest vestiges of a case system remaining. My Russian friends in particular make some amusing errors with word order sometimes, but I think it's charming.
Edit: and for the example given, "Man bites dog" and "Dog bites man," what is required is a verb change, perhaps a couple of articles, and correct capitalization (unless it's a news headline, in which case it's fine). So, "Dog bites Man" can be written as "The man was bitten by a dog" with the same meaning. English verbs are also hard for non-native speakers, though.
I guess some of this is also, to what level do you need to learn German? Some of the parts of German grammar that are difficult for English speakers can be mostly avoided by just phrasing things differently. Basic use of cases is necessary, but some of the rules around compound sentences can be skipped at first by just using simpler sentences. If what you're after is a reasonable conversational/email level of German, that's enough for many things, and you can always learn more constructs later. If you want to be a professor in the humanities and need to write/speak a formal academic level of German, that's different, but that's probably not the common case for HN readers.
Learning cases is a little hard, and the silly capitalization rules are a hindrance, but probably the most difficult thing in German for most English speakers is waiting for the damn verb to make its appearance. It's harder to guess what it will be than it is for native German speakers.
I would guess that learning German would be easier than English for a native speaker of a Slavic language, though, precisely because syntax plays such a critical role in English, which has only the barest vestiges of a case system remaining. My Russian friends in particular make some amusing errors with word order sometimes, but I think it's charming.
Edit: and for the example given, "Man bites dog" and "Dog bites man," what is required is a verb change, perhaps a couple of articles, and correct capitalization (unless it's a news headline, in which case it's fine). So, "Dog bites Man" can be written as "The man was bitten by a dog" with the same meaning. English verbs are also hard for non-native speakers, though.