Introduction to Theological German: A Beginner's Course for Theological Students

by J.D. Manton

Introduction to Theological A Beginner's Course for Theological Students

Genres: German Literature

112 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2004

Reviews

[Lancelot Schaubert · Rating 4 out of 5]

As said before, I'm a linguistic moron. This book helped me to be less so for a little while, though if you use theologisch Wörter to your agnostic German friend, be sure to be met with stonewalled silence for a time. That stonewalled silence will turn into something like an awkward roommate situation in which you'll both become ghosts of one another, one of you steaming the water, the other brewing the tea, less and less eye contact as each of you dutifully presses the button every morning. You'll go about your duties and think nothing of it. But the passive aggressiveness will grow until one of you will get mad at the other one for not doing the dishes and make a snide comment about schmutziges geschirr sorgt für volle waschbecken and then the other will take offense and then spray Zuckerwasser all over the counter until sweet ants cover everything like
der süße süße schwarze Abgrund der Nichtigkeit and you'll want to end it all. But you won't because you've bid your time and continue learning and realize that Egal wie dicht du bist, Goethe war Dichter was really a pun about poetry and not an accusation about you drifting further away from them than their imaginary relationship with a dead poet and you'll sit down and watch Robin Williams and sip spaghetti-O's out of a nalgene bottle straw and everything will be okay in the end.

Four stars.

[Davis Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty decent introduction, but only for those who know Greek or Latin already—definitely don't use this as a casual German primer if it's your first second language. Very bare-bones, which is good for those who want to cut out the fluff and build basic proficiency as quickly as possible, but not so helpful when vocab is no longer being provided, forcing you to keep flipping to the glossary. Could use more reading selections for practice, or at least a wider range of selections. At the very least, the typeface and format are badly in need of a reissue.

[Nathan Nadeau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed Manton, moreso than Wilson. If you have acquired a similar language (with a case system), it's a very concise way to acquire a solid foundation of vocab (~600 words) and to get you reading academic articles fairly quickly.

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book should, in my opinion, only be used as a compendium of theological vocabulary in German. The grammatical explanations are occasional (i.e., as the need arises in texts Manton has you translate) and very unsystematic. For a much clearer presentation of German as a research language, I recommend April Wilson's German Quickly (see my review). However, Manton's dated book can still serve as a useful reference for theological vocabulary and practice passages.

Strengths:
+Theological Vocubulary in an easy-to-use format
+Biblical passages and short theological excerpts are good practice

Weaknesses:
-Typeset text (i.e., like reading Courier New font all the time)
-Poor grammatical explanations
-Dated vocabulary (e.g., the second person nominative pronoun "du" rendered as "thou")

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and to the point. A fine introduction with additional reading practice, but pair it with another reader and a vocab builder - this is just a short introduction to German grammar with a few of the more common theological terms. Good for self-taught language learners (because of its brevity it requires lots of self-motivation).

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. New cover yet the text is a facsimile, not re-typed. The layout is somewhat atrocious.

[Mac · Rating 1 out of 5]

Someone needs to write a new, up to date Theological German grammar.