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- Hacker News
- I did something similar back in 2019 but for learning Dutch with games, which I made originally for my child but this kinda helps me remember many A2 words and helps me with the exams. Now I have the Dutch citizenship.
Not as extensive as the site but with the images, interactions, it helps with remembering the vocabularies. https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Joel+Bryan+J...
by jjuliano - Very cool! I really need to work on my mobile development skills.by predictand
- Nice, but as someone who can read some German but not write it accurately, I found it rather hard to type any accurate answers. Having some sort of multiple choice options would be very useful to begin with.by rcarmo
- Thanks! I definitely want to implement it as well to also make it more mobile-friendlyby predictand
- At least https://www.learngermanwithgames.com/games/german-verbs-to-e... : has a bug. It shows correct, as soon as your substring matches. Thus, you can enter the first letter of the word and it will show it as correct.by 1718627440
- That's a good catch! Thanks for reporting.by predictand
- The 'German Time Game' is confusing (at least to a native). The answers you want to hear are words you would say about a digital clock, it's highly uncommon to use this to tell the time from an analog clock. Maybe you should consider showing a digital clock for this game. What you would use for an analog clock is what you call 'Time Short Form'.by 1718627440
- We have been told that it might be normal to tell the time like that from an analog clock in places where precision matters (like train stations or airports). As a beginner, this is how we started to learn it as well in the course I am taking. I think it makes your brain work harder by making it do more processing (you need to interpret the clock + the numbers, whereas a digital clock simply gives the number to you, so less mental processing is needed). I see where you are coming from, but it helps me with my learning and coursework.by predictand
- It's a really cool idea! Watch out for AI mistakes though, especially when generating content in a foreign language. I see one mistake in the "Time Short Form Game" image where the image has "habl" for what should probably mean "halb".
Also, I'm not sure if converting between 5 digit numbers and words is a good starting task, unless you want to dive right in with German's (in)famous word chaining ability.
by xg15 - Yep, I noticed AI is terrible with words on images, and that seems to have slipped my attention. Thanks for the callout! I tried to keep the number games tamed by only going up to 3 digits.by predictand
- I've tried lots of German text books, and 99% of them are essentially very easy grammar tests, which you quickly learn to fill, without actually learning to speak. In Goethe Institut's courses you also simply fill many tests, but in a group. This may help preparing for an exam, but not to learn anything.
That said, I'd love to see excercises on a really hard matter: verb controlling the noun. E.g. ich vermeide <which prep?> <noun|infinitive>. And not just random verb + random object, but sequences of the same verb, to get it remembered.
by culebron21 - I find the 'Deutschkurse Passau" workbooks [0] to be the best at focusing on grammar structure and providing useful practice. They can be worked through without an instructor (provided you've had some exposure to the grammar at each level.)
0. https://www.deutschkurse-passau.de/JM/index.php/downloads
My main complaint with most of the other German language coursebooks is the grammar lessons are too scattered, and the main effort in doing the exercises is figuring out what they want you to do.
- Somewhat related: if you think German is hard, prepare yourself for the friendly and talkative culture :)by nxor
- What do you mean?by kleiba
- You're doing the Austrians and Swiss Germans a disservice :)by rcarmo
- I lived in Canada, Germany, and Switzerland. In my experience, Canadians and Swiss are really nice on average; however, my experience with Germans has generally been on the margins. They have either been very rude or super friendly. I guess that’s what you get when people simply speak their mind.by predictand
- Congrats.
Some German natives may argue that the time short forms are wrong as they prefer "dreiviertel" instead of "viertel vor".
by rwoerz - Stay with "viertel vor" please :D Well, it depends on where you are in germany...by brettermeier
- Let's not get started with that... those same people also say "viertel vier" to mean 3:15 (one quarter of the "fourth hour" has passed), which is really confusing to the uninitiated, so "viertel nach"/"viertel vor" is preferable IMHO...by rob74
- Congrats on the launch!
Quick feedback: the website looks very polished and intuitive. I especially liked the test about articles, where I didn’t have to type. I liked that the website works well on mobile too. The content is not what I’d call games though; based on the name I expected something different than test questions and quizzes.
by merelysounds - Fair enough! I should try to introduce other options that are more game-like.by predictand
- Nice, not sure if "Guess the Artikel" makes sense this way. Sometimes it’s not clear whether the word is singular or plural, which affects the article. For example, I got "Ausländer," which can either be "die" for plural or "der" for singular.by tobi_bsf
- There are words that can have several Artikel, sometimes depending on regional differences (e.g. Austrians have different preferences than Germans), sometimes because of multiple meanings of a word. In that case, I would expect the game to accept all valid answers. But I got the impression that all words were singular, so "der" would be the only valid option for "Ausländer". I had a similar issue with "Geschwister", where I picked "das" (correct according to https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Geschwister), but the game expected "die" (which IMHO only makes sense for the plural form). Looks like it needs a bit more QA :)by rob74
- I don't see how people can learn a language by tests, which are only telling you if you did it right or wrong. I can see how this is used to verify the existing knowledge, but I don't see any usage in learning.by rspoerri
- It's gamified. People like winning games. People dislike taking tests.by IAmBroom
- I agree with this, I didn't see it as a game or learning anything. It didn't even give me the correct answers if I got it wrong.
This is more of a "quiz" format, not learning. There is a difference.
by adamredwoods - I like to think of grammar rules and the accompanying tests that make you remember them as.. rules you can use to generate any number of examples to better the language.
You learn a language by being exposed to it countless times, but most of us doesn't have the opportunity to be immersed 100% into a foreign language. Simple rules let us try out new sentences and do some self-checks to cull out the definitely wrong ones.
This makes your "training set" significantly larger without having to "collect that data". Of course it doesn't replace anything, but it is a useful part of the language learning journey, especially the early part. Later on, nothing can replace simple exposure.
by gf000 - Of course, these games won't help improve your fluency in speaking German, but they might help you e.g. remember the correct gender of a noun (and thus its "Artikel"), which is one of the most difficult aspects of German and can only be done through rote memorization.by rob74
- On the topic of learning German with games, the recommendation I've seen before is that many games have language options and depending on the type of game you can learn a lot that way just because you spend SO many hours in it.
So the Sims, I'd guess, is probably a good example for building vocabulary. Edit: example https://dasboudicca.substack.com/p/i-learned-german-and-siml... (This writer has lots of game learning reviews)
by elicash - That's a really good recommendation! Also, a great excuse to spend more time gaming.by predictand