Is this German updated and correct?

Question

I've taken a couple German classes and I'd like to start reading a little by little, dictionary in hand. Someone recommended this site. I see a lot of Grimm stuff though, and if I remember from reading them in English, it was understandably outdated and not something I would have suggested a beginner to read.

Could someone take a look at the link and tell me if this German is relatively modern and simple enough? (By simple, I mean I've taken two years in highschool and 1 year in college, though I was pretty good at it.)

http://children.logoslibrary.eu/document.php?document_id=42737&code_language=de

Answer 1

To be honest, I'm not a great fan of using older texts for a beginner. I've seen texts written by an American learner of German once that sounded very old-fashioned. It turned out that he had learnt German primarily from 19th-century literature. Imagine somebody writing emails in English in the style of Charles Dickens or Jane Austen, only with frequent grammatical errors!



As for the text on the website (I only had a quick look at the first page) - it seems to be correct apart from one spelling error. However, parts of the vocabulary are dated and some of the words wouldn't be particularly helpful in everday life. By dated I mean that the words are comprehensible, but that people wouldn't speak or write like that in real life today. E.g.



Des Kaisers neue Kleider = dated/poetic genitive construction. Normal would be "Die neuen Kleider des Kaisers".



"recht geputzt" = dated in the sense in which the phrase is used in the text



"Rock" = dated in the sense in which the word is used in the text.



"es [ging] sehr munter her" = sounds slightly strange to me. I would say "zu" instead of "her", but maybe that's a regional thing.



"Zeug" = dated in the sense in which the word is used here



"dem Zeuge" = adding an -e to the word in the dative singular sounds old-fashioned (see also "dem Stuhle", etc.)



Handgeld = dated



What about easy readers in German? I read a famous work of German literature, Goethe's Faust, as a much simplified and modernized easy reader version with a Canadian friend. I think she enjoyed it a lot (I certainly did :)).



Have a look here, for example:

http://www.amazon.de/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85Z%C3%95%C3%91&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=daf%20lekt%C3%BCre



There are also "easy reader" versions of fairy tales which use only up-to-date colloquial German. E.g.

http://www.amazon.de/Rumpelstilzchen-nacherz%C3%A4hlt-Specht-Deutsch-Fremdsprache-Leseheft/dp/319301673X/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1367355241&sr=8-18&keywords=daf+lekt%C3%BCre



Maybe you can also find these books on Amazon.com. Otherwise, you could order them via Amazon.de, see:

http://www.amazon.de/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_gw_enhp/?nodeId=505532



On many of these books you will find terms such as "A1" or "B2", etc. These are European terms to express different levels of language proficiency. See here for an explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages#Common_reference_levels



To determine your present level, you could take a free online German test, e.g. here:

http://sprachtest.cornelsen.de/html/en_startseite.html

Answer 2

The German is correct, but I'm not sure how modern it is. From what I read it's not the "really old" way of speaking, but not the way people usually write these days either. Sorry if I can't make much sense... it's more a feeling than actual knowledge.

If you want to start out with something familiar you could read the German translations of English books as well. The first English book I read was "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" a couple of years after I had read the German book the very first time (that would be "Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen", by the way). I had begun to learn English only about three to four years earlier, so I suppose reading German Y/A novels with similar experience will probably work, too.

If you don't want to watch the German news (I can see how they aren't the most interesting way of learning German) you could watch movies or the German synchronization of TV shows that you know. I'm currently doing that with French and have done it with English the same way, and it worked okay for me.

Answer 3

I'm sure you have heard of Grimm's Fairy Tales, and Hans Andersen ditto - you probably had them as a small child - the stories are old, the German is correct and simple. Quite tedious for an adult though. I don't understand why you don't just buy yourself some adult fiction, from www.amazon.de - or read the newspapers such as taz, faz, die Welt, die Zeit, der Spiegel - online? or have a look at the deutsche Welle website - www.dwelle.de - listen to the radio there, read the texts - plenty material to help you improve your German. Or use German google, www.google.de, ut / deutsch ald=s Fremdsprache/ in the search box, see what you get.What about the authors you studied when you were taking German at college - could you not build on that? Not the older ones like Goethe, but you must have studied some modern writers? At uni in the UK you'd expect to read Christa Wolf, Martin Walser, Heinrich Böll, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann etc etc.

Answer 4

It's modern and correct. Simple? Maybe.

Germans use a different tense when writing stories, than they would use when speaking. So just make sure you're familiar with it.







Here are some other good stories.

http://vs-material.wegerer.at/deutsch/d_lesen_gesch.htm

Answer 5

Jah, sounds correct to me. Although.... You may need to in finding one other translation for 'also', if viable. If now not, i am sure the person in question will have an understanding of it. So. (I in finding that many Deutschen can realise a number of English phrases substituted. At the least, those I meet in the video games I play can. :x)