> I spent a little while trying to parse out each word, guess common roots, vaguely remember the little bits of German grammar I've absorbed over the years, and

> I spent a little while trying to parse out each word, guess common roots, vaguely remember the little bits of German grammar I've absorbed over the years, and so on. And German has a particularly special trap for "trying to parse out each word": trennbare Verben (separable verbs). Unless you know enough of the grammar to know when a piece of the verb has been unceremoniously punted to the end of the sentence, trying to use a dictionary to find the meaning of the verb of a sentence can be an exercise in futility.