Cold War Chris

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I hit a big milestone today. I finished this book—in German.

I’ve been (trying to) learn German for many years now. In the process I had to completely re-learn English grammar. And in •that• process, I also learned just how poor my early grammar education had actually been. Subjunctives? Plu-perfect passive tense? Subordinating conjunctions? Relative pronouns? Verb mood and aspect? Direct and indirect objects? Accusative case? I had to learn all of this stuff in English again. Like skateboarding, it can be very, very humbling.

In any event, I never thought I’d ever be able read an •entire book• in a foreign language, but I did. It was certainly slow going, and I certainly had to look-up lots of words up, and have my German teacher walk me through tons of idiomatic expressions. Almost every page is marked-up like ones shown here. I am by NO means fluent at this point. But, when I started this book, it would take me about an hour to get through a single paragraph. By the end, I could get through several pages in that time. It’s all about the progress, not necessarily the final result.

Aside from the German aspect of all this…I’m not sure what all the fuss about Harry Potter is/was. I thought this was going to a really mind-blowing story. It was just…meh. The Shinning was much better. :)