Brushing up on my German

My parents emigrated from Germany in the mid-1950s and I was born a decade later. My mother spoke German to me as my first language, at least for the first couple of years, until the neighbours wondered why "the kid" couldn't speak any English.

Suffice to say, the German language has fairly deep roots within me but, as with many things, if you don't use it, you lose it. Or at least, it rusts terribly. I can still muddle through most written German, if it's not too far beyond a Grade 3 vocabulary... My writing is also not bad... although fairly simple. I apparently amuse my German relatives with my "quaint" writing style. Verbal communication also isn't too bad but... it is definitely rusty.

When I went to university several decades ago, I took a first year German course as one of my arts electives. Given that I hadn't had any formal German education in high school, I snuck under the radar for this course. Compared with the non-German speakers, I was stellar... but where I did benefit greatly was in the grammar and vocabulary. Things like verb conjugation and tenses... like genitive and dative... don't ask me what they are now though!

My German had a huge boost from that course but then... like all things... it wore off and now my German is quite rusty again. But... a German email-pal, a former Lutheran pastor who writes very good English, told me that he had boosted his English by reading books. Not just any books... he knew the books quite well from having read the German versions... all he did was read the English versions... He said that he sort of unconsciously "inhaled" the language. Which made a lot of sense to me.

I have tried reading some fairly technical books (espionage and death penalty) in German and... stumbled quite a bit because the terminology was definitely beyond my school-girl German! But... I stumbled through with the help of my Google Translate app... My friend's idea though... that sparked a bit of action yesterday.

I love Dick Francis mystery books... and the Pern fantasy/sci-fi series... and a few other books. So I did some serious research last night, figured out the German titles of three of my favourite books, from different genres and ordered the Kindle versions of them. If I want to improve my German, it would seem that this would be one small step in oiling the deeply rusted language roots in my brain!