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German Literature Log. | ||
Tags: Literature | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| MeshGearFox Senior Member United States Joined 6544 days ago 316 posts - 344 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 7 05 August 2007 at 8:11pm | IP Logged |
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This sort of evolved from TAC. Anyway, my initial goal was to finish reading Biedermann und die Brandstifter. I did. Being a play, it was quite conversational, and not at all that hard. I had to look up a lot, but I felt I could read it rather fluidly.
I've decided to move on to Durrenmatt's Der Richter und Sein Henker and Katz und Maus, by Grass. The former's a glossaried version that I've already 'read' in German class before but I think it's time I re-read it. The second's just a plain, normal edition. Anyway, there was a section of it that I'm having trouble with. I might end up typing up said paragraph later. I think it's some odd stylistic thing that I'm not getting, but I'm not entirely sure. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MeshGearFox Senior Member United States Joined 6544 days ago 316 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 2 of 7 10 August 2007 at 11:58am | IP Logged |
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Okay, I gave up on Katz und Maus and started on der Verdacht.
I had an interesting experience last night. Having just read http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/archives/96-08/1154.html I figured I'd try that. This is something I've done before, read and jot down vocabulary, but not extensively. anyway, I did that for a bit, but it was about 4 AM and I suddenly got very tired. I remembered what someone else said -- just reading, even if you don't understand it, can be useful because your brain makes connections. So I tried this for a bit. One thing I did was try to, well, mentally read it with proper pronunciation and stress. im still not entirely comfortably with what spoken German sounds like, although the biggest difference from English is that it's relatively level-sounding, and not completely all over the place like english is (Did english get this feature from Swedish or something?) In any case, I found that, oddly enough, I could understand what was going on even if I was only understanding maybe 75% of the words. I have some theories on why this is, but I doubt they're right or interesting. It's just that I've never tried doing that before and I thought it was really neat. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MeshGearFox Senior Member United States Joined 6544 days ago 316 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 3 of 7 31 August 2007 at 10:17pm | IP Logged |
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I hadn't been getting terribly good results with this. My current plan is to work through this vocabulary builder till I can work through texts better without having to look up everything.
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| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6319 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 4 of 7 01 September 2007 at 2:32am | IP Logged |
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How'bout using easy German readers that will gradually build up your level till you can read real literature? Some of them can be found as audiobooks (with 100% accurate transcription and vocabulary notes), which might help your pronunciation. Or you could read contemporary German books, which are bound to be somewhat easier than books written long ago, where you have to deal with outdated spelling, outdated vocabulary and outdated grammar constructions along with the normal rich literary language.
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| glossa.passion Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6170 days ago 267 posts - 349 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, EnglishC1, Danish Studies: Spanish, Dutch | Message 5 of 7 01 September 2007 at 12:07pm | IP Logged |
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I agree with Sprachprofi, reading easier books will surely be more successful.
Another recommendation from my own experience: take a book in your native tongue which you really like and look for a German translation. Sometimes it's easier to read translated books in the target language. I do it with crime stories, they are often (but not always) simple, have lots of direct speech and are available in variuos languages. And a further advantage are the series. If I can get used to the style of a certain writer, every new book of this writer is easier to read for me. Another favourite of mine is "Call of the wild" and "White Fang" by Jack London. The translations in other languages are often online for free, e.g. Spanish, Hungarian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6319 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 6 of 7 01 September 2007 at 12:17pm | IP Logged |
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A great easy story to start with is also "The Little Prince" (in any language except Romance languages). The particular advantage of this book is that the story is nice (not just a kids' book!) while the language is quite easy, particularly after the narrator has met the little prince (chapter 4?). You could read a German version online at http://www.odaha.com/littleprince.php?f=DerKleinePrinz .
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| MeshGearFox Senior Member United States Joined 6544 days ago 316 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 7 of 7 12 September 2007 at 1:03am | IP Logged |
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My vocabulary is actually limited to the point where even with the Little Prince I'm be looking up every other word, which is rather mentally fatiguing. Despite being dry, the vocabulary builder is more what I think I need.
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