Climate Change in Simple German: Learn German the Fun Way with Topics that Matter

by Olly Richards

***Black and White Interior Edition**** Improve your German and expand your vocabulary with topics that matter. When it comes to mastering a foreign language, reading around your interests makes all the difference. But finding books designed for language learners can be hard! This book fixes that. For the first time, you’ll learn to improve your German while reading about one of the most important topics of the climate change. Told through authentic conversations in intermediate German, you’ll become confident in the words, phrases and expressions you need to speak about the topics you care about. Climate Change in Simple German transports you into a real-world story that unfolds between three German characters. The story, told by the people themselves, focuses on climate change and their effort to learn more about it! Over 30 engaging and informative chapters, you’ll immerse yourself in the topic of climate change and master German in the process. Here’s what you’ll Created by Olly Richards, language teacher and author, Climate Change in Simple German gives you an experience in real German that you won’t find anywhere else. You’ll be better prepared for using German in the real world, speak with more confidence, and take a giant leap towards fluency! SCROLL UP AND GRAB YOUR COPY NOW!

Genres: German Literature

222 pages, Paperback

Published January 13, 2022

Reviews

[Samichtime · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m concerned, about both the environment and the length of these words! Here’s a list in ascending order:

Bildschirmschoner- 😅
Forschungszwecken- 😳
Kohlenstoffabscheidung- 😰
Lebensmittelverschwendung- 😱
Treibhausgasemissionsreduzierungsstrategien- 🤯

The climate might be warming but the guy who came up with these words is ice cold! 🥶

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are better ways to learn about climate change than having your basketball game interrupted, seeing a classic painting defaced, or having a group of morally preening students blocking your route to work. There are also definitely better ways than watching a walleyed Swedish preteen hector a roomful of sanctimonious rich people.
Climate Change in Simple German presents the basic argument of climate change, all the while teaching the beginner-intermediate learner German. Each chapter is based around a conversation between a group of friends who meet to talk about the environment. Some of them are journalists, while others are teachers. Some of them are amorously involved with each other, which provides a good opportunity to examine whether zero-population growth might be the best way to deal with climate change.
Some of the scenarios are more plausible than others. The one where the amateur climatologists go to the butcher’s shop and have a friendly conversation with the butcher strains credulity to the snapping point. Yes, I know these are just exercises designed to get the arguments out there, but it’s just not plausible that a butcher would cheerfully greet someone trying to destroy his livelihood.
The dark little secret, of course, is that the same people pushing climate change—urging us to eat bugs in tiny, cubicle-sized hovels—are great wastrels of resources who have no intention of changing their habits. It’s mentioned in this book that someone taking an intercontinental flight is likely to use more resources within a year than a million people in a less-developed country who are unlikely even to ride the train. It’s left unmentioned that those Western cognoscenti who gather in their ski-resorts to discuss the problems of climate change get there usually by plane, usually and most egregiously via personal jet.
Liberals and progressives roll their eyes and regard the question as churlish—a bit of tu quoque/ whataboutism—when people mention that those pushing this stuff hardest have private jets and yachts and do things like consume truffles which can only be harvested via helicopter from the Italian highlands before being iced and flown to eateries in LA and New York. But still the question remains, and must be asked: why should we sacrifice so much—in many cases our livelihoods—when those who can make the greatest difference refuse to be anything but hypocrites?
This is all of course ancillary to the book, which is as great as anything else Ollie Richards has compiled to help you effectively practice and improve your German. But certain subjects popular with the Davoisie—chief among them climate change and immigration—are becoming exhausting to the hoi polloi. I spent enough time in college to get my MA and to be exposed to the goodthinkers, but my heart remains with the dirt people, and it was hard to read some of these chapters without finding the well-meaning declaratives one after another to finally be insufferable, moral preening.
Reading the exchange in which the two students smugly told the butcher the deleterious effects that meat consumption had on the planet, I found myself wishing he would put his cleaver to other, more grisly use. And seriously: how do the good people not realize that environmentalism and mass immigration from the south to the north are mutually exclusive? The more people you bring from low resource-consuming countries to those where it’s de rigeuer to consume more (especially car-centric America) the worse the problem will become. And if China is opening two coal plants per week, and it takes roughly five days for the jets stream to transfer pollution from there to here, how can the problem be solved? It’s like these people—despite their advanced degrees—are babies lacking object permanence, convinced that if they close their eyes the problem will solve itself.
Highest recommendation, regardless, though, for the educative effect of the grammar and vocab, even though the science* included is a very different animal from actual science.

* “The science,” distinguished seemingly by a single definite article from “science”, encompasses a host of beliefs necessary to prove one’s goodthink to the globalist project, and should not be conflated with science, which is a systemic endeavor for gaining knowledge. i.e. “The science” says that the covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective. Science—along with actuarial and anecdotal data—are starting to suggest otherwise.

[Geoffrey Wohlgamuth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining and easily digestible. This was definitely at the very low end of B1 vs a B1/B2 level. The majority of unfamiliar words were clear from the context what they were. And the definitions at the end of each chapter helped for any outliers.

The “conversation” approach was a little heavy-handed. Like watching a “very special episode” of a children’s tv show. I think this is also why the level felt easier (ie: each person in the conversation spoke 1-2 sentences max, so you couldn’t really get lost vs a typical book with full paragraphs).

The “important facts” at the end of each chapter were difficult to read in the chosen serif italicized font. They also weren’t usually facts – more summaries of key points.

I understand why references were included for every chapter, but this equated to 1-2 pages per chapter * 34 chapters = a good 40 pages just for references! The formatting of always starting chapters on the left page created a dozen blank pages throughout the book. For a book on climate change, it was certainly a choice.

[Sankhalika Mukherjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would highly recommend for someone with B1 or B2 German Level. Good for adults who wants to start reading in german. Easy to read and follow. The writer recommends not looking up words that we don't understand while reading and that's a great help. Each chapter ends with the vocabulary that might be new.

[Carol Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read for practicing German!