Don't forget, there are tons of other amazing German authors, just to name a few: Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Schiller, Goethe...

I think German literature is to this day still probably the best in the world.

I also find Math in German way easier and more beautiful than in English. If "clean code" was a thing for languages, German grammar would seem to me to be one of the cleanest.

Java was born to be written in German given the exceptionally long words that appear in both :)

Can you expand on this?

>If "clean code" was a thing for languages, German grammar would seem to me to be one of the cleanest.

Can't agree more here.

Such life experiences always produce a significant effect on ones life.

Have done it a couple times, by the way ..

I was terrible with the romance languages, like nearly failed. Oral, written, reading, you name it. Just terrible all around. Couldn't get it. I'd freeze when trying to construct a sentence orally.

German, on the other hand, I found to be pretty easy. Being the parent of English, the grammar is essentially the same. I'm the kind of person that needs to know the rules before I jump in, so nailing the grammar is essential. Immersion programs like Rosetta Stone requires a leap of faith, which frankly scares me.

The vocabulary and verb conjugations were hard, but that was mainly a matter of straight memorization. The pronunciation is very consistent - way more consistent than English. Learning German actually helped me understand English more.

Edit: Also, if you want to check out something short, engaging, relevant and easier on the German, give Ödön von Horvát's Jugend ohne Gott a whirl.

reviewer's coding scheme explained on: https://sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de/hd/periodical/pagevie...

An organisation has really "made it" when they get a special font dingbat. Not even Prince Rogers Nelson managed that...

https://yi.wikipedia.org/wiki/הויפט_זייט is interesting if you can read hebrew script.

https://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Houptsyte_(Schwyzer... will give you some idea why I recommended starting with the NZZ, which almost writes in standardised german.

[1] it was yiddish that got me into russian, because it's easier to find more than just Andrews Sisters on YouTube in cyrillic: eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWeqbs9OFX0

also recommended, for any germanophone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH1fERC_504 (or anglophones who don't mind subtitles)

[2] in tourist hiking areas, a popular past-time is to guess where people are from by how they greet on the trail.

I'm glad, though, that he wrote in German. It's always nice to read authors in their original language.

(on reading vs speaking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23582262 )

Not to discourage you from a Sprachaufenthalt (ganz im gegenteil), but you can prepare for one by following germanophone papers. (which have the advantage that you've probably read many stories in your native tongue beforehand ... also one can start small by just picking out nouns at first, which won't the case for latin-1, but is very useful when learning a new script)

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/

https://www.nzz.ch (in Schrifttüütsch, conveniently for you)

I don't normally follow AT, maybe https://kurier.at ?

Hals und Beinbruch!

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Edit: there are a couple of amusing anecdotes on german culture in http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm which I find stereotypical to this day:

> Germans liked things done in an official and formal manner, even in the midst of chaos, catastrophe and defeat. The Allies obliged, and gave the Germans various forms of very official-looking "surrender passes," ... http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/images/p4.jpg

> The Americans and British dropped leaflets on Berlin ... [with] key numbers in the corners, showing to which series they belonged ... Nazi authorities [sent] Hitlerjugend and Hitlermädel out to pick up the leaflets and turn them in for destruction. ... What the Nazis discovered—too late, too late—was that the schoolchildren had begun collecting the leaflets, using the key numbers to make up perfect sets. Some numbers were rarer than others, so that the Hitlerite children swapped Allied leaflets all over Berlin, trying to make up attractive albums. Mother and Father—who did not dare pick the leaflets up off the street for fear the Gestapo might be watching—found a convenient file, reasonably complete, in the room of little Fritzl or Ermintrude!

Undoubtedly not just a loose file, but neatly punched in a two-ring binder. When Oceania starts to always have been at war with Eurasia (that is, if they read their own books, which Dr. Linebarger doubts), they'll have to make up propaganda sets in the form of Panini cards.