Whenever you are learning a new language, you’ll definitely run into some difficult words. It’s not just about pronunciation, but really grasping the meaning and usage of that difficult word. Seeing as German and English are related languages, you may be less likely to run into difficult words as with other non-related languages. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Mastering German Vocabulary: A Practical Guide to Troublesome Words attempts to help students have a more thorough understanding of the language as a whole.
"The book reads as an English-German dictionary. This makes the book absolutely useless if you hear a “troublesome word” in the middle of a German conversation and want to find out what it means."
While this is the goal of the book, we’re not convinced that it succeeds. The book reads as an English-German dictionary. This makes the book absolutely useless if you hear a “troublesome word” in the middle of a German conversation and want to find out what it means. In that case, this book is not for you. Your only hope is to look in the brief one-word German-English index in the back and hope that the word you are looking for is present.
The main portion of the book states a word in English and then gives any number of translations into German. Then, the book goes on to explain the circumstances in which you would use each option. This explanation is done in English but provides an example sentence for each word. Strangely, the book offers no phonetic spelling of words. If we are, indeed, tackling difficult words, wouldn’t pronunciation be an issue worth addressing?
The formatting of the book is also quite a problem. There are no spaces between words; only a small indentation alerts us to the fact that we are on to a new word entry. This makes it very difficult to scan each page if you know exactly which word you are looking for. With so many bold print statements and words in the explanation sections, there is little to help the word entry to stand out.
There are often words that are tricky to tackle when learning a new language, which is why the name of this book initially caught my attention. However, upon opening it up, I was quite confused at the correlation. This book, which is merely a variation of a dictionary, is not a book to “master troublesome words”.
