460 New Words

Ich habe nun viel mehr Flüssigkeit auf Deutsch aufgebaut. (If you can "build up" something as swooshy and pouring as fluency, that statement has to be true.)~ And did I make a mistake in that sentence? I wouldn't dare post up anything longer because I surely would. I did German A-level nearly 20 years ago, so I think I can be forgiven for having to look up such elementary terms as "suddenly" and even "actually" in the dictionary. Having said that, I worked out that I have a 93% comprehension rate of the German I am reading. That is: (after flying through the entire book without dictionary) I have ploughed through 25 pages at approx. 360 words per page, ie about 5400 words and looked up and listed 20 pages full at 23 lines to the notebook page of definitions. Ie there were 460 out of 5400 no! 9000 words! I did not understand. Giving me a comprehension rate of about 95%.

The book in question, in case you have not been reading is called Christiane F: story of a child prostitute and heroin addict. I found it very depressing first time round. The book is made up of tape recordings by two Stern journalists who found out about the then-15-year-old heroin addict after she was prosecuted for three cases of drug-possession. "We the children of Berlin Zoo" (the main railway station and hence a meeting place for junkies) was such a successful series of articles in 1977 that a full version, published in book form became a popular bestseller. The centre pages are full of pictures of very young kids, most of whom say they started fixing between 13 and 15 (younger for girls). Page 186, next to a picture of a girl who resembles a tall china doll, says: Livia S began using at 15 and died aged 18 in the public toilets in Hansaplatz. In her pocket was a letter to the Social Welfare Office pleading for a place in rehab. "Could you please find me a place as soon as possible. One extra day out here could cost me my life. With your help I could turn into a healthy, employable person again." And page 187 shows her dead body, laid out in the toilet cubicle with what appears to be a drugs works and a packet of something beside the corpse.

The bit I'm still on is about an idealized childhood of a country girl who couldn't understand why in Berlin you weren't allowed to play on the grass. Now I know all the words for metal grille, barbed wire, giant sign, concrete bunker and so on ... It takes such a long time looking all these up and writing them down (I have to write them down: otherwise I can't read the book back with a list of every word I don't know in order of appearance). I started starring every word I've consulted in the dictionary. My memory is so bad there are some I end up looking up five or six times ...

Well I have to go. Time is vanishing quickly. Hope y'all had a nice weekend ...

Illustrations: Langenscheid and Oxford-Duden, 2 of best German dictionaries; "works" ~ when I first moved to London I used to think people had dropped very narrow number-decorated pencils on the road; Gropiusstadt ~ Berlin suburb by Neuköln, where Christiane F grew up (and you're surprised she ended up on heroin~??..)