Day 461 of German
My friend, M, recommended Momo by Michael Ende a few weeks ago. I was good about reading at least a page a day during the first week. Then, a super busy second week hit, and I stopped reading completely.
This morning, knowing I had a crazy workday ahead, I decided to tackle German first thing. When my usual learning app, LingQ, was acting buggy, I ditched the digital and grabbed the actual book: Momo. I was so glad I did!
The reading is definitely still a workout—I look up about 8 to 12 new words per page. It’s a mix of completely fresh vocabulary and words I should know but can’t quite trust yet. After a slow start, I settled into a decent rhythm of moving forward, marking words as I went.
The Elegant Logic of German
Even though I know I’m definitely missing some plot details, I decided not to check my understanding against the English translation. I figured I shouldn’t interrupt the momentum.
This isn’t me being lazy or overconfident; I actually appreciate the fact that I don’t understand everything and the plot remains a bit mysterious. I want to power through with my current, imperfect understanding. I hope to come back to Momo in a few years and realize how much I missed, just like I have with books in Mandarin, English, and Japanese..
The sentence, “Der Dapitän und Don Melú blicken sofort durch ihre Fernrohre,” (page 26) made me genuinely happy. I instantly figured out the compound word from its parts: “Fern” (far away) + “Rohre” (tubes or pipes, plural). Fernrohre means telescopes! Discovering that kind of elegant logic in the language is exactly the joy that fuels this whole obsession.