Wikipedia as a source of reading materialIn the last week or so, I focused on reading Wikipedia as a new twist to expanding reading knowledge. It has been a good decision overall, in particular for broadening the scope of what I consume and getting a high volume of new and challenging material. One of the first and toughest text entries that I read through intensively was the main article covering the
Erster Weltkrieg. It took me three days to wade through that one, but I am glad I did as it was quite enjoyable and I learned a great deal.
I also dug my heels into the
Dreißigjähriger Krieg and read it top to bottom. They get bonus points for employing a defenestration to initiate the war. From the time period, Peter Hagendorf's
digital - Tagebuch eines Söldners is well-preserved and was an interesting find. The link takes you to a digital version of the text.
Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus, one of my favourite books so far in German was also mentioned explicitly. The most confusing part of that article is that I am not familiar enough with the characters yet to appreciate the full story. I know I will need multiple passes no matter which approach I take, so that is no surprise.
Based on what I have saved under
Beobachtungsliste, I have seen about 75 articles so far. There are ample ways to go about finding articles to read. One that shows promise and that I plan to check out is the list of
Lesenwerte Artikel. Another, perhaps the more compact option is to use something like
Wikipedia nach Themen. My own personal TBR grows by the day, so there is no shortage of material.
Today, I finished reading
Geschichte Deutschlands. The article started out quite well and I was more or less afloat with interest and engagement. Then I made the mistake of tackling the rather bloated and dense section on contemporary politics while short on sleep and distracted by stressful work demands. That quickly degenerated into a disaster saved only by long pauses and embarrassingly large chunks of translation. I regrouped after going on a long run and finished, pretending the original debacle had never occurred.
Intensive Reading NotesWhile it is fresh on my mind, I should note that Wikipedia is a good source for taking a close examination at some of the problems faced when learning to read German. The articles above showcase quite a few different complex sentence structures, some that I don't even recall having reviewed in my brief stint in grammar study. That may be partly due to wide-ranging topics and partly due to employing a multitude of authors.
There is a good opportunity to practice picking apart sentences at a leisurely pace. The stories told are interesting, but they won't run completely away from you and have significantly less dialogue. I have picked up quite a bit of vocabulary stemming from heavy and multifaceted use of German orthographic conventions as well the tendency to chain many complex terms consecutively. In the latter case, I notice that I can absorb a certain number of those, but that the damage tends to be cumulative and I may simply run out of intellectual gas before I actually reach the end of the sentence.
At that juncture, I then backtrack and start picking the sentence apart using different techniques and identifying the location of comprehensible chunks of information (notating collocation placement as well as breaks that are not punctuated explicitly) and backing into acceptable meaning.
Getting a sense of where those collocation breaks occur is perhaps the most useful thing I have done to improve orientation and avoid getting totally lost. The more complex the sentence, the more likely I am to be off base when I construct meaning and the more likely I will need to verify by on the spot translation. That plus using Transover for individual brain farts and new vocabulary lookups more or less allows me to get through most constructs, even if the overall pace and process makes for a slow grind.