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dragontamer

@ dragontamer @lemmy.world

Posts
142
Comments
1692
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • I've been listening to "Du bist schön" for months. I finally decided to "study" it today so that I can understand it. (IE: Google translate, Wiktionary, etc. etc.)

    ...

    Holy shit. I knew the words for mirror, beautiful, as well as Alligatoah makes it clear that this guy was talking to himself in the song. But the full understanding was lost until I studied now.

    That's a lot of self deprecating humor all at once. With a huge amount of social commentary.

    I can highly recommend as a German language exercise, though maybe it's a bit of a downer overall.

    https://youtu.be/dlvStoOyEzE

    I knew this was a sarcastic and "biting" song even without study. But wow.

    Du bist schön, aber dafür kannst du nichts

    Weder lesen, noch schreiben, noch was anderes

    Du bist schön, aber dafür kannst du nichts

    Du kannst nicht mal was dafür, dafür kannst du nichts

  • 6 months of learning German: My story

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  • May is pretty soon. Are you going to try and attend the trade show this year? Curious if that was/is your goal.

    Yeah. The goal was always to reach A2+ before May (meaning I had 6ish months staring in November when I decided to be really serious about my studying).

    It's an trade conference in English. But in Germany. So now I have some "fire" and a practical exercise. I basically want to be able to take the train, listen to airport announcements and overall enjoy Germany without pulling out Google Translate all the time.

    I think I'm like A2- though, slightly behind schedule. I'm not convinced that I can pass an A2 exam right now. But I know all the theory of A2 subjects (weil vs dann and sentence structure, comparatives, subordinate clauses, perfekt vs präterium) and have substantial numbers of hours in grammar practice.

    Just not quite enough practice yet to pass a certification exam.

  • 6 months of learning German: My story

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  • Thanks. The card I had, as well as Wiktionary, are both missing the context for zureden.

    DWDS has the contexts and examples, but I'm not strong enough in German yet to consistently read DWDS yet. https://www.dwds.de/wb/zureden

    I'm getting there however. I can understand the gist but not the nuance of DWDS.

  • 6 months of learning German: My story

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  • Thanks!

    Ich bin seit zwei Monaten "Zwei Welten" gehört! "The Wise Guys" singen klar und deutlich. Ich empfehle auch!

    The Wise Guys sing clearly and precisely. I do recommend them. I have been listening to their album "Zwei Welten" since ~2 months ago.

    Maybe I need to make a new topic for my music / listening list?

  • 6 months of learning German: My story

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  • English translation:

    Sweet, I mostly got it! Without any help from Google Translate or Deepl (just Wiktionary for the two words I didn't know).

    Hmm. zureden is supposed to mean "to encourage", according to some cards I bought. It seems like I messed something up with that.

    “deine Worte machen mir Mut.”

    Definitely seems like it works. Thanks!

    I guess I'm now curious how to use zureden. Maybe "Du hast mir zugeredet." ?? I see now that it's a Dativ verb, so I messed that up earlier....

  • 6 months of learning German: My story

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  • Ich verstehe... veilleicht? Deine Wörter sind fast alle in meinem Wortschatz. Ich muss nur "Anerkennung" und "durchgebiasen" in a dictionary lookup. (Aufsehen? I need more vocab....)

    EDIT: im Wörterbuch aufsehen. (???) ins?? Hmmmmm

    Es ist schwer, das "bin, lernen und zu müssen" wurden in nur ein Satz benutzt. Sondern ich verstehe veilleicht. Ich muss mehr Grammatik üben.

    Danke! Deine Worte redet mich zu.

  • Language Learning @sopuli.xyz
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    6 months of learning German: My story

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • I tried the audio .mp3 files from my "Grammatik aktiv" book. And... I'm really not good at this. More weaknesses identified, more drilling needed. Etc. etc. Its seemingly the eternal struggle of language, practice something. Try something new, realize I'm bad at this new thing, practice some more.

    Doing Grammatik aktiv once-per-day seems like a slog as it is, realizing that I've missed out on all the audio practice though... I've got 27 chapters here of audio I need to catch up on and actually do. Uggghhhh. Maybe I'll do 1 Grammatik aktiv per day still, but try to catch up with 2+ sections worth of audio (or more?) per day until I'm sync'd up.

    Anki cards still tough as ever, despite being at only 80% FSRS retention and 10 cards/day (+5 words/day). In practice, I know I'm learning more words/day due to all my grammar practice + other sources of review. (Music song study, reading, etc. etc.). I'm back up to 10-seconds/card, which seems to be my natural / long-term pace at Anki. At least for "random-ish" words coming out of the 4000-word frequency list that my main Anki deck is part of.

    All in all: I still know what I'm bad at, what I need to practice, and how to improve.

    I am thinking of maybe writing up a "6 month review" of my language learning experience. I've attempted to write something for the last 3 weeks actually, but I've deleted my writing each time due to writers block. I'm not quite sure how to describe the whole experience or what perspective I should write about. I'm still a relative beginner in the great scheme of language, but that makes my experience valuable to other beginners who are feeling the slog for the first time.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • The Grammatik aktiv practice (one or two per day) has proven to me the importance of grammar drills. By reviewing A1 level grammar, I'm now a bit faster at ein/eine/einen/einem, kein/keine/keinen/keinem, dieser/dieses/diesen/diesem, mein/meine/meinen/meinem, wer/wen/wem, welcher/welches/welchen....

    It feels like I'm not progressing in some respects because of so much review. I already knew all this stuff... But knowledge isn't enough! I never built up the speed or confidence, the "skill" of using these little grammar things.

    I'm beginning to enter the A2 level drills. I've also flipped to the end to look at the B1 drills, all look quite doable because I kinda know all the theory.

    But when I'm trying to read or listen to my daily German material (Kurz und Leicht, or various podcasts...) It's clear that my biggest weakness remains vocabulary. 5 words/day on Anki has always been on the lighter end of German review. I might have to "crunch" vocabulary practice somehow.

    Sigh: it's like every skill I have is so inadequate. Progress in one skill (grammar) reminds me of the weaknesses in other skills (vocabulary).

    All in all: yes. Grammar is important, even if it's boring. These were the things I made lots of mistakes with when I was trying to talk or write in German. So hopefully my output (speaking/writing) has improved.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • Intensive is like 4 hours of lecture per day btw. (And a fair bit of review/study after that, daily). Obviously there is good opportunity here, but be sure you have enough time for it before committing.

    Or otherwise, be sure to ask for how many hours/day or hours/week would be expected of you.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • I've never done intensive but it sounds doable for a few months at a time. Obviously it depends on your specific program, but expect like 50+ words per day vocabulary and an intense grammar program with it.

    It's pretty much the fastest you can possibly learn, which makes it a lot of work and quite difficult.

    You learn so quickly that it will also go away quickly. So be sure to practice after the course if you want to "retain" it.

  • Ceasefires agreements always seem to start in a future date/time... it must be awkward to look at the watch and be like "the ceasefire hasn't begun yet, KEEP SHOOTING!"

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  • There was one weird agreement. During WW1, the Pope declared that a Christmas ceasefire should happen. Obviously, the Pope has no such power in these matters and the diplomats around the world failed to turn the Popes wish into any real ceasefire.

    But then, a bit of Christmas magic happened. It turns out that WW1 soldier conditions were so shit, that many soldiers wanted to go against orders and proceed with the Christmas ceasefire anyway (as an act of rebellion against their commanders).

    Legend has it that soldiers picked Still Nacht (aka: Silent Night), it being one of the few bilingual Christmas Carols. If both sides in the trenches started to sing the song, you knew it was safe to partake in the ceasefire, allegedly with another confirmation of Oh Come All Ye Faithful (another Christmas carol).

    This all proves one thing. It's not the leaders or diplomats that really matter per se with ceasefires. It's the soldiers at the bottom. If they refuse to shoot, then the ceasefire will happen. With orders, or (in the Christmas miracle...) sometimes AGAINST orders.

    It's not a complete miracle, as some reports of fight / killing still happened during the Christmas Ceasefire. But there are reports of hundreds of thousands of French, British, and German soldiers exchanging Christmas gifts (coffee and other trinkets), playing soccer and more. So it largely was a success.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • Which language?

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • 85% on the final exam of my German class. It was equivalent to A2.1 (with A2.2 and A2.3 if I were to continue). Although the class was clearly good, it was substantial amounts of time and money invested, and the stated schedule feels quite slow (3 hours a day / 30 weeks on A2 alone?).

    At least at my beginner level, I think I can self study further and faster (especially with 10 weeks of class under my belt). I do have a substantial amount of German exercises / books that I've been meaning to get through. So a few weeks (months?) of self study probably is fine.

    I am worried about my speaking skills for the near future. But I do think that today, my main hold up is simply vocabulary. Reading, grammar exercises, and other activities should improve my vocab. I'll look into speaking / talking practice later. For now, I'll try self study / shadowing for my speaking practice.

    Self study is averaging a bit above 1 Grammatik aktiv lesson a day (on good days I can get two done). I also flipped through the whole book and I think I'm actually aware of all grammar concepts from A1 through B1. I just need the practice so that my skills can do it.

    Vocabulary wise, my plan is to coast on frequency list for now (while I'm focused on completing Grammatik aktiv), then use Nico's Weg A2 level to shore up my vocab. Grammatik aktiv is 100% German so it is some supplemental vocab practice.

    Anki remains set at 5 words a day (+10 cards/day) for now. I really don't know how others can push 10, 20 or 50 words a day. My long term hope is that when I get my vocab from my graded readers or other related coursework, it'd be possible to increase back to 10 or more words/day.

    Between Anki and Grammatik aktiv, that's over an hour day commitment. Every car drive is passive listening to German music only, I do browse some German YouTube and other passive practice. I know it's not a complete study course but it's what I got for now...

  • Do you learn "vosotros" conjugations in your Spanish learning and ¿de dónde sois?

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  • Native USA here. My grade-school Spanish teacher was American-Spanish without Vosotros (Only ever using "ustedes comen")

    My high-school Spanish teacher was from Spain, and thus taught us "Vosotros" and its conjugations.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • I've got 3 days left for my class, so I'm beginning to work on my self study again.

    Gramattik Aktiv feels the right level. The early exercises are easy for me but still useful. Being in 100% German makes it feel very efficient for german learning.

    I'm maybe 80% memorized the song ,,Mein bester Freund''. https://youtu.be/A1I4GStK3Cw , pretty easy song so might as well start singing right?

    The "Deshalb kampf' ich jetzt" was the difficult part to get my tongue fast enough to say, in the last verse. Otherwise it's all pretty easy!

  • Is Babbel a good way to learn a language?

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  • Find the people who actually learn a new language to any respectable degree... and none of them use Duolingo. Duolingo is a gamified piece of crap designed to sell advertisements. It makes you think you are learning.

    At best, Duolingo gets you maybe to A1 level (ie: understanding the alphabet of target language, sounds, and a few common words). There was a time when some select languages had strong community forums on Duolingo that the community would learn despite the shitty software, but all the moderators + teachers were fired and "replaced by AI". So you don't even get a community these days. The people are the key to any liberal art. And language is at its core, communication. A community of people can learn despite any level of shitty software.

    The paid software (ie: Babbel, Rosetta Stone, etc. etc.) all have small but paid communities of teachers behind their exercises. Its not the best learning, but its better than Duolingo.

    If at all possible, find in-person learning. Community college, actual college, or other language schools. iTalki is available if you want a cheaper online-only teacher. If you live in an area with lots of spanish speakers, it should be possible to find a local language teacher...

    Private tutors are most convenient but are the most expensive. (3 hours a week private tutors are the cream of the crop, but very expensive). If you have a large enough community, there's a chance you get into small-group study (4 people per class), which cuts costs down dramatically (half-off or cheaper per person). Community college and other courses are only a few hundred bucks for a semester, a bargain for what you get in comparison to private tutors. But you won't get as much attention.

    Self study options (ie: self-help software like Duolingo, Babble, Rosetta Stone) are the slowest and hardest way to learn. Its better than nothing, but you'll really need someone to talk Spanish with in your life to actually practice. Plenty of people learn languages by themselves, so its completely possible. Just know you are taking the hardest path.

    I probably should tell you about "intensive learning". Some people go all out, which means quitting their job for extended periods of time, and joining a school for 4+ hours a day with 4-hours of homework per day, and spending months drilling a language. This includes Diplomats at the US State Department, Military Linguistics, and "Intensive Language Schools". Its considered the most efficient way to learn, but many people fail and the lifestyle is incompatible with a regular life. (either that, or you use it to replace your job, like a military linguist officer).

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • Nicos Weg (from Deutsche Welle) is probably the best free source of German study in the whole internet.

    So yeah, definitely use dw.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • Have you tried shadowing?

    Its not perfect speaking practice, but you can do it by yourself. You need a script + a recording. You listen to the recording, you read the script, then you play the recording AND talk at the same time (possibly reading from the script). Songs are a good start, but you also want to practice "normal speaking melodies / normal speaking rhythms" if at all possible.

    I've been using songs + a German A2-graded news script here: https://learngerman.dw.com/de/kurz-und-leicht/s-69137519 . Its free for me, but you'll have to search in your target language for a similar resource...

    The idea is you want to match EVERYTHING with the native speaker. Accents, melody, rhythm. Exactly everything. Shadowing at EXACTLY the same time is your best shot at matching perfectly.

  • How's your language learning going this week? - Weekly thread

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  • Reading of true native books is also a great option. French in particular has "Le Petit Prince", an excellent book for the A2+ level or B1- level. 15000 words, pictures/illustrations to help you out. And a story that is simple enough for a child, but enough nuance for adults to have celebrated for the past century.

    You'll see what I mean about "frequency lists" when you read any book. You'll have both common words, but also important "rare" words that you need to master to get through the book.

    A2 is too early to completely understand the book. But you will get a better idea of how language is used by natives by reading native books.

    This is where Anki's true superpower comes up. Building your own cards. If you set your goal as "Le Petit Prince", you simply put into Anki every card you don't know yet and feels important (don't aim for 100% understanding, its basically impossible at A2 level). Then you keep drilling until you can read the book. Easy and done. Its not as good as roleplay (where your brain starts to search for new words to continue a discussion). But its still better than a frequency list.

    But yes, keep studying the frequency list! Its not bad. I'm just trying to say where you can get some "better" and more meaningful material.

  • Lemmy.world Support @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    I can't see all topics when logged in

  • Language Learning @sopuli.xyz
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    German A1 level Roleplay: experiment topic... Alice calls Hanz and then .....

  • Language Learning @sopuli.xyz
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    3 months of German Study through songs (A1+ Beginner)

  • You Should Know @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    YSK: Anki (especially in FSRS mode) is an incredible learning tool if applied correctly

  • Games @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    I wrote a guide to Dungeons4

    steamcommunity.com /app/1643310/discussions/1/594035508989101311/
  • 196 @lemmy.blahaj.zone
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    Blame Canada

  • Programming @programming.dev
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    Datastructure for intervals across 64-bits or 128-bits??

  • Cars - For Car Enthusiasts @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    Prius Prime 2024 Followup: More Tests

  • Technology @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    Prius Prime 2024 Followup: More Tests

  • Technology @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    Efficiency test of my 2024 Prius Prime: Gasoline vs Electricity in my first week.

  • Cars - For Car Enthusiasts @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    Efficiency test of my 2024 Prius Prime: Gasoline vs Electricity in my first week.

  • BestOfLemmy @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    Temporary rule: No new Political Topics until Nov 16th but.... Use this topic to discuss

  • Political Discussion and Commentary @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    Free Gaza / Palestine supporters: I have a question for you (Discussion about media)

  • politics @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    Hey Dems, stop doomscrolling and go win the election

    www.washingtonpost.com /opinions/2024/10/14/democrats-trump-harris-election-fears/
  • Electrical and Computer Engineering @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    Excellent Mastodon post: why does heating an XBox controller fix it? MLCC Capacitor chemistry, physics, heat infodump.

    chaos.social /@gsuberland/113084315488845513
  • Electrical and Computer Engineering @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    Quick notes on Microchip's MCP9700 / MCP9701 Temperature Sensor

  • Electrical and Computer Engineering @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    How to Select a Timer on AVR MCUs

    www.microchip.com /en-us/about/media-center/blog/2024/how-to-select-a-timer-on-avr-mcus
  • Electrical and Computer Engineering @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world

    Nyquest NY8A051H - 1.5 cent microcontroller : weekend die-shot : ZeptoBars

    zeptobars.com /en/read/Nyquest-Technology-NY8A051H-8051-smallest-microcontroller
  • Electrical and Computer Engineering @lemmy.world
    dragontamer @lemmy.world
    popovicu

    Making my first embedded Linux system

    popovicu.com /posts/making-my-first-embedded-linux-system/