Language learning tool: Lernkrimi

December 08, 2014

Since I’ve been living in Germany, I’ve been working on learning German (very urgent) and Spanish (for fun). My local library has a lot of resources for languages (even for Slovak or Swahili!) and I ran into the Learnkrimi collection. It’s a pretty good collection for language learning and I thought I’d give it a nice review here. I have been through a lot of language learning methods, manuals, bilingual books, and what else do I know. Some are good but I think Lernkrimi is even better.

I have a very fond memory of the Spanish learning series. The two main characters are commissar Garcia and his German colleague Bea (from Hamburg of course ;)) and they make a fun duo that I actually enjoyed following across Spain. And this is actually the real strength of the series; the books have ‘some’ literary depth. It’s not John Updike, but it’s a lot less naive than most language learning books. I do think it’s very nice that a publishing house finally realises that we should not have to choose between learning a language and enjoying a story.

For once, the reader does not have to face a dumb story with one-dimensional characters. The stories are well written and very catchy.

I just bought my first Lernkrimi for Italian learning (I cannot believe I’m learning Italian via German!) and I just saw that Lernkrimi is starting Swedish, on top of English and French.

Image: Wikimedia

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