Reading

I heard that people in the UK and in Germany are reading more as they stay at home to avoid coronavirus contact risks. I also heard that cases of the virus and deaths are still rising. My weekly routine has changed since summer. I no longer have contact to my ladies for the buildings have been closed until at least the start of next year – maybe until next Easter. My gym has been closed so no more meetings with Kerstin and the Friday Gang. I spend more time at home reading.

Here you can see a pile of books and magazines that make up my ‘To Read’ list. It is a mixture of novels and language books. Every night I settle into bed and open the book called ‘1001 Pitfalls in German’ which is well written and with clear explanations. I first read the book years ago and now I’m learning from it again. There is an interesting chapter about verbs and tenses. Even so, there is no clear explanation as to why German people do not use the simple past tense or when the stopped using it. I have asked many Germans why this is and I just get ‘I don’t know’ as an answer.

They use the simple present or the present perfect tense all the time. The book includes such sentences: ‘The German present tense is used in time expressions for actions that began in the past and continue into the present.’ ‘It is very often necessary to translate a German present perfect by using an English past.’ ‘The present perfect is the usual past tense in conversation’. I don’t need to give more examples. Instead, your will find that German grammer allows long words to be created, for example by sticking 5 or 6 words together and creating a word with 80 or more letters. A lot of these words appear in legal and business German. Have fun if you are now learning German and you will find a dictionary still useful.