How difficult is Kafka in German?
How difficult is reading Kafka in German? Can a beginner read Kafka as their first novel? We'll answer these questions (and have a look at some text passages) in this blog post.
As a language learning platform with a particular focus on German reading & learning the language through curious content, one question that we get quite a lot is how difficult it is to read German classics.
And one name that comes up particularly often is that of Franz Kafka.
But how difficult or easy is Kafka really?
How difficult is Kafka in German?
A lot of learners would like to at some point read their first German novel that's not a children's book, so they'll start looking for beginner books or easy novels that might fit the bill.
In this context, Kafka seems to be recommended surprisingly often. And indeed, the very first sentence of Kafkas metamorphosis seems easy enough:
Sure, this is not an easy sentence. But there is also nothing incredibly difficult about it. The sentence structure is very straightforward and the most difficult vocabulary item in the sentence is probably the word Ungeziefer.
Easy right?
But Wait A Second...
Before we stop here and conclude that reading Kafka is a walk in the park, let's at least have a look at the second sentence.
Easy? Well, no!
This sentence is by no means beginner-friendly.
I think the reason why people recommend Kafka to beginners comes down to what exactly is being recommended.
If you ask me what German classics are the most accessible for beginners, my answer will be very different to my answer to the question about the easiest German crime novels.
Of the classics, Kafka is probably on the easier side. But the easiest German classic is probably still going to be more difficult than then easiest German detective novel.
Now, I am not saying that you shouldn't try to read Kafka. Compared to other German classics, Kafka really is one of the easier German writers out there.
I am just saying that it doesn't make a great first novel for beginners who want to start reading and get some comprehensible input (for this, we recommend our simple German stories or our online German lessons). This is why we haven't included Kafka's Metamorphosis in our blog post on German beginner books (but he did make it into our list of intermediate German books).
But even for intermediate learners, Kafka won't be a walk in the park. There will be sentences that will confuse you.
Easy Kafka Quotes (in German)
Well after just talking about how difficult Kafka is and how you shouldn't read the metamorphosis as your first novel, let's end this blog post on a more positive and opimistic note, with some Kafka quotes that are actually rather easy to understand.
Let's have a look now at some Kafka quotes that you might be able to understand:
What did you think? If you are unsure, you can always tap the grey bar to reveal the full translation.
