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I studied German in school, for a total of about five years. Three hours per week of classes, and a little homework. But not much. Doing some rough math, I estimate that to be about 540 hours of German classes. Not a huge amount of time for learning a language, especially when spread out over such a large amount of time. Definitely also enough time to learn a decent amount of stuff.
But either way it was just enough to get me trying to read books in German.
Near the end of the last year I studied German in high school, the teacher brought three copies of a comparatively easy German mystery novel from the school library to class. My high school German class only consisted of three people out of which two showed up to class less than half the time. So to no one’s surprise, I was the only person who actually made an earnest effort to read it.
I honestly didn’t understand nearly as much I would have liked, but I pushed through and made it to the end of the book. Even if my comprehension in parts left a lot to be desired, I learned a lot. A few words. A better comprehension of certain aspects of German grammar. And a better idea of how things actually are used “for real”.
Inspired by this experience, I read another five books in German over the next year and a half.
Then I didn’t use the language at all for the next five years (In all honesty, I’m not sure it has been exactly five years, but I figure an estimate is…