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German reading group!

  Tags: Book Club | Reading | German
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading Post Reply
76 messages over 10 pages: 1 2 35 6 7 ... 4 ... 9 10 Next >>
Flarioca
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Brazil
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 Message 25 of 76
07 April 2012 at 3:28pm | IP Logged 
frenkeld wrote:
Well, "crazy to marry" doesn't sound idiomatic to me anyway - I assumed you meant that the ladies in
question were very keen on getting married. But then, it's the Geman we are after here, not English. :)


Yes, that's what I meant and it would be nice to know exactly how to say this in English too :-))
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Sunja
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Germany
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 Message 26 of 76
07 April 2012 at 6:52pm | IP Logged 
I think frenkeld hit the right word: the ladies who are "heiratstoll" are all usually in their twenties and are "marriagable". Easier said, they're the right age for marrying.

Edited by Sunja on 07 April 2012 at 6:54pm

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frenkeld
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 Message 27 of 76
07 April 2012 at 7:46pm | IP Logged 
Sunja, are you sure?

While the most common modern meaning of "toll" seems to be "great, fantastic, amazing", the other meanings include "(wild, ausgelassen, übermütig) wild; wild, mad <tricks, antics>", and some of the older meanings are "mad" and "rabid" (the complete word for the latter is "tollwütig").

Now, here is a link to a German web page, where the following sentence is present, "Kindstoll, heiratstoll, immobilientoll - das zeigt einen einschienigen Menschen mit einfachen Vorstellungen vom Leben." This sounds more like what Flarioca was saying than simply being of marriageable age.



Edited by frenkeld on 07 April 2012 at 7:47pm

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Tecktight
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 Message 28 of 76
07 April 2012 at 11:34pm | IP Logged 
Whoo, count me in on this group! I just downloaded "Der Frauenmörder" and shall begin reading soon.
:)
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sofiapofia
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 Message 29 of 76
08 April 2012 at 12:45am | IP Logged 
Right, I finished chapter 1 yesterday and have started with chapter 2. I have an exam on Tuesday so I'm going to have to put Der Frauenmörder aside for a while.

I found reading Chapter 1 hard at first; the sheer amount of unknown words scared me a
bit. However, by the time I reached page 3, I started to feel more comfortable with the
structure of German sentences and I actually went through the rest of the chapter really
quick. I particularly enjoyed reading the four different cases!



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frenkeld
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 Message 30 of 76
08 April 2012 at 7:20am | IP Logged 
Done with chapter 2. I have a feeling I had to look up more vocabulary than in chapter 1, but I don't find it distracting with an eReader. As the story goes, this chapter is still background to the case, but fascinating to boot in its own right - the book looks more and more promising.

A couple of notes:

1. I couldn't figure out the word "jeute" in "... man jeute also ein bisschen, ...". It must be a past tense of some verb, but I am not sure which one. Whether it's a rare word, simply misspelled, or goes under a different spelling these days, I wouldn't know.

2. The word "knifflich" in the sentence, "Seit fünf Jahren wurden ihm die schwierigsten, knifflichsten, verzweifeltsten Fälle anvertraut, ...", may be spelled differently nowadays: "knifflig" (also spelled "kniffelig") seems to fit.


Edited by frenkeld on 08 April 2012 at 7:25am

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Serpent
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 Message 31 of 76
08 April 2012 at 3:12pm | IP Logged 
Maybe it's just heute? :D
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frenkeld
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 Message 32 of 76
08 April 2012 at 4:56pm | IP Logged 
The full (long) sentence is: "Man war jung, hatte in Pommern einen Bruder Gutsbesitzer, der durch Heirat klotzig reich geworden war, man jeute also ein bißchen, gab für nette kleine Mädchen mehr Geld aus, als man eigentlich durfte, pumpte von Zeit zu Zeit den um zehn Jahre älteren Bruder kräftig an, kam oft etwas verkatert und zu spät in das Bureau oder zu Gericht – kurzum, man lebte so und nicht schlechter als tausend andere junge Referendare, die »von« sind, als nette, lustige Kerle gelten und gut daran tun, sich die Hörner abzustoßen, bevor es unter das Joch der Ehe und Würden geht."

It looks to me like "jeute" is a verb here, but maybe I am wrong. Now that we are at it, I am also not entirely sure what "gut daran tun" means in this sentence. The dictionary says, "jemand tut gut daran + zu + Infinitiv es ist gut, dass jemand etwas tut;", but I can't decide if that quite works here.


Edited by frenkeld on 08 April 2012 at 4:58pm



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