How I Read Remarque in German at the Beginner Level
I was looking for something really challenging
English was my first foreign language and not one I was particularly fond of. For several years I have been thinking about learning German, because it was the language that really interested me and seemed beautiful to me. In May 2023 I finally got the chance to do it.
I took a beginner's online-course and was struggling with adjective declension and past tenses for a while not bothering myself with any extra content in German. But in October 2023 I suddenly remembered my old dream of reading Remarque in the original. I suppose, this dream came about when I first read Remarque in my native language (Russian) and was struck with the thought that «Life On Loan» must sound more natural in German than in translation. Now that I knew some German, I found «Night in Lisbon» one evening and decided to try to read a few pages. Just for fun. I was absolutely sure I would not get through more than 3 lines and would give up on the first page.
I ended up reading the whole novel. 300 pages of unadapted German, Remarque being the first German author read in original.
To say that it was a difficult read is to say nothing. Vocabulary was not even the biggest problem, although I clearly remember having to translate every other word in the sentence... including the forms of the pronomens… it was quite exhausting, I would say. But I did learn some specific words in German, like «refugee», «border», «prison» and so on (God knows what for).
The real problem although was the syntax, because understanding all the words in the sentence does not (as it turned out) automatically mean understanding of the meaning of the sentence. And this was sometimes too much for me. My knowledge of German syntactical constructions back then was limited to the notion of the past tenses, imperative forms and 3 cases out of 4. I did not have the slightest idea about conditional, subjunctive, clauses and many other things. Sometimes I misunderstood sentences completely and it was especially disappointing to read the translation after that and see that the meaning of the sentence was not actually incomprehensible and that I could manage it if I tried a bit harder.
There were, however, several things that helped me get through the text though. «Night In Lisbon» has a very dynamic plot, there are very few (if any) landscapes described and not many philosophical digressions. There are also not many heroes and no long descriptions of characters’ traits or appearance. All this made the reading quite bearable and I was able to remember some of the most common verbs, because they were used on every other page. But it was still difficult in the whole, because A1 in any language does not really mean reading unadapted texts. Especially fiction texts. Especially one of 300 pages long.
Little did I know at that timethat a few weeks later I would remember Remarque with a little sadness when struggling with «The Reader» by Bernhard Schlink…
That one was a real challenge. Wading through paragraph after paragraph with three dictionaries being unable to help me make head or tail of the sentences… did not contribute to the boost of my self-confidence, to be honest. I could barely get through 4–5 pages of A5 format a day. (For comparison, when reading Remarque, I could read about 10 A4 pages at a time closer to the end of the novel). I used to take breaks for 2–3 days before reading the next chapter, because it was just mind-blowing.
I could generally understand the episodes in which some aactionwas described, but not the parts in which the narrator ponders the fate of his generation... Schlink’s syntax is much more difficult than Remarque’s and his vocabulary is no better. It is varied and flexible and contains many adjectives describing shades of human emotion and behaviour, so I spent hours comparing synonymous adjectives and trying to figure out the shades of their meaning. Now that I have finished «The Reader» and seen the film I go back to some of the episodes that I particularly love and when I read them again and again I feel the incredible beauty in how these sentences sound in German. The first time I read them, of course, I could not appreciate them to the full.
Sometimes I cannot understand what made me struggle with these novels trying to get through the text despite the objective lack of the language skills.
I guess, after all it was really just for fun, just as it was supposed to be from the beginning when I opened «Night In Lisbon». I found it interesting to bite into this incomprehensible syntax, compare synonyms in three dictionaries and finallyget to the meaning of the sentence. I find it more captivating to learn the language not only from the textbooks, but also byinteracting with it live.
I actually tried to learn Italian inthe same way. I just opened an unadapted book and tried to read it. I even went so far as to try to workout the Italian system of tenses without using any textbooks, just by reading this novel. Did not make it to the end although, because decided to concentrate on German and Hebrew, but Italian is still on my list of languages and I hope one day I will finally finish that book and deduce all the tenses.
At the moment I am reading Remarque’s «Spark of Life» in German having almost reached A2 and it seems much easier than two previous texts. The syntax is really simple, there are no complex sentences that go on for page, no multiple subordinate clauses that are connected by God knows what principle. The vocabulary is also comprehensible, sometimes I can read half a page without using a dictionary at all. Feels very unusual, to read in German and understand so much. This time reading Remarque is almost like a kind of rest for me. Reading «Night In Lisbon» and Schlink could definitely not be called rest. Those 4–5 pages were ten times more difficult than one German class. But «Spark Of Life» is something I leave for the evening when I have enough time to immerse myself in the text and enjoy the beauty of the German language.
Having read two German books by completely different authors I can see how much I gained from this experiment. I feel myself more comfortable with the language overall. I can write more complex sentences than I am supposed to be able to write at my level. I make fewer mistakes in the word order and cases than I used to and than the other students in rhe class. I can also use a wider range of vocabulary, etc.
I find the experience of reading non-adapted books in the language I am learning invaluable. It gives so much more, than any language class can give.
And the moment when you understand the sentence of an unadapted book in a foreign language you have been learning for ≈ a year without needing a dictionary is worth all the struggle and sufferings that led you to it.
I do not equate reading in German with German classes I attend 3 times a week. It is a different kind of activity and I see it as something optional rather than something I definitely must do every day for a certain amount of time. But I would still highlight several tips that I follow when reading in German:
#1 I pay special attention to the grammar topics I have trouble with. For example, when I see prepositions of place which are used with different cases in German depending on the context, I slow down, reread that part of the sentence and analyse the use of the preposition in this particular context. It helps me to use these prepositions and cases more accurately in my own speech.
#2 I always check a word in the dictionary when I do not know the exact translation. Even when it is not important to know the word in order to understand the sentence as a whole, even when the meaning is obvious from the context, I still check. Sometimes it may turn out that I mistook it for a similar word which had absolutely different meaning or I simply find something interesting and unexpected in the dictionary entry.
#3 I use Lingvo dictionary and Duden for translation, because I find them the most accurate and complete. I only turn to Google translate when everything is really bad and I can not grasp the meaning of the sentence despite having translated every word.
#4 I consider reading books aimed at my real language level pointless. I get texts which are designed for A2 German at the online-course I attend and find it more interesting to familiarise myself with more difficult material outside the class. It requires much more time and effort than consuming content at my real level, but at the same time it gives a quick and very intensive boost in mastering the language.
My list of further plans is quite long. After dealing with Remarque I am planning to try Zweig (I bought a collection of his short stories when I was in Berlin). I also want to read «Perfume» by P. Suskind. But my most ambitious goal for now is to try Iser one day (a German literary scholar).
P.
If you found this post interesting, you can check some of my other texts:
