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Yesterday I told you about German Kindle books for learners, Today I had planned to tell you about another way of using your Kindle, but this time the blog post has been written by my partner Steven. Thank you, Steven x
The acid test of your ability to understand a language is being able to read a contemporary book in the language.
So I decided that I would read Sakrileg by Dan Brown on my Kindle , it is the German version of The DaVinci Code , the story is familiar and I already own a printed copy of the book in English.
It seemed a great idea.
How hard could it be ?
I discovered that my German vocabulary needed some work . I could understand the gist of what was being written but I could not read without cross checking with the paperback. This was not a good idea and became tiresome after a while. Swapping between books , checking dictionaries and asking Angelika was fun for a while but not the best way to do it.
It would be much better if I could click on a word and get an instant translation into English .
After some research I found the Kindle version of the Collins Concise German-English Dictionary .
Of course now I could look up words without leaving my Kindle.
It gets better .. the dictionary integrates into the Kindle ..
Highlight a German word you are unsure about and a window opens over the current page giving the definition and translation with examples of the words usage .. then you can press the more key and add a note to the word in order to build your own word reference .
This means that I can read a book in German , quickly look up words I do not know and make notes.
The difficulties I experienced when I started reading have been removed, I can now enjoy reading books in German and the books in the GoodReads best German authors list is a great place to start .
Anyone want to start a free German Kindle book club on Facebook ?
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