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- Learning German!
Learning German!
Hey everyone, Thought I would make a post. I've had Duolingo forever, but I am finally really making an effort to learn German. I look forward to learning much more in the coming months and being able to read your posts a little better :)
47 Comments
i'm new to duolingo (only about 2 weeks now) and i love it! im learning german as well. anyone else find some aspects of german a little confusing, like she and they being the same word? lol
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Yes, you are getting a taste of the idiosyncrasies of German. It is a fun language to learn. It will get easier, but pronouns still stump me sometimes but not as often. Keep with it!
It helps that back in 7th grade I had a German class that I liked and the teacher was cool, but when I got to Sophomore year of high school I had a Spanish teacher I couldn't stand so it kinda ruined learning Spanish for me! Lol. I have a question though, if I were to try to learn French after completing the German skill tree, would it make French a little easier to learn?
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I wish to disagree with David904136. German and French do in fact differ very significantly in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. So as David904136 says, there is little synergy between them.
But if you take up learning German, work conscientiously, and learn it well, it will in fact help you to learn French. Why? Because by learning German you will have learned how to learn a foreign language. Polyglots will tell you that knowing at least one foreign language makes the learning of others easier for just this reason.
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I probably shouldn't speculate but I doubt it will help much. French grammar may be more similar to German than to English, but judging from Spanish - which by many accounts is somewhat similar to French grammatically - I wouldn't hope for much.
I may entirely off-base here and anyone who knows better should feel free to correct me.
Perhaps because I learnt French and German at school at the same time, I have found that although I'm only interested in getting my French back it has been helped by doing a bit of German too.
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NickSherma7 - There are 4 cases in German. I found something that helps describe what we mean:
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-four-german-noun-cases-4064290
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when you get to the cases, make sure you read the tips and notes which come with those lessons or it ends up very confusing. The four cases are Accusative, Dative, Nominative, Genitive. For a head start in understanding check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VowGvnRU_s&list=PLYzp2xhTw9W1Xfjp8_0oxsULeUw5g80TH
When you learn at first.. eg Der Mann or Die Frau, with the die or die and the Mann and the Frau are in the most basic case form, the Nominative case. Without memorising the nominative case for words, you will never be able to work out the other cases for them. Always learn nouns with their nominative case when you learn new words..
eg depending on case. Der Mann may change to Den Mann (accusative case) or Dem Mann (dative case) which then changes other words in the sentence too. or in the dative case Die Frau shifts to Der Frau. All the nouns shift, so learning cases which follow certain grammar rules become important for learning how to do sentences.
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Cases are rather like subject, object, possive. In English, subjects and objects differ only for pronouns, in German nouns also differ according to case.
Also, direct and indirect objects are grammatically different in German which isn't the case in English.
Direct objects of some verbs in German deviate from the norm; German prepositions also are inconsistent.
So there are four cases, nominative, accusative, dative, genitive which very roughly correspond to subject, direct object, indirect object, possessive. Very roughly.
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Viel Spaß beim Lernen! Und nicht vergessen:
Immer fragen, wenn etwas unklar ist, okay?
Have fun learning! And don't forget:
Always ask, in case something is not clear to you, okay?
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Willkommen! Ignore the knuckle-draggers. They are a tiny percentage of the community, but they like being heard. The rest of us are here to learn and help each other along. I put off learning German for a long time, but I'm glad I finally did. It's now my favorite language. Below are a few resources I have found along the way. You may find some of them useful.
Wiktionary (Look up words from any language. Shows pronunciation, declension, conjugation, etc.) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page
Forvo (Listen to native pronunciation of words from any language.) https://forvo.com/
German English dicationary | LEO https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/
German verb conjugation | Verbix http://www.verbix.com/languages/german.html
Translation in context | Reverso Context https://context.reverso.net/translation/
Learning and Teaching German | ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/german-4133073
Toms Deutschseite http://www.deutschseite.de/index.html
German is easy! https://yourdailygerman.com/
Learn German with Herr Antrim https://www.youtube.com/user/MrLAntrim
Learn German with Jenny https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClBrbJXNh2sFxOuvH4o5H9g
Easy German https://www.youtube.com/user/magauchsein/playlists?sort=dd&view=50&shelf_id=14
News in easy German | Nachrichtenleicht https://www.nachrichtenleicht.de/
A Review of German Grammar | Dartmouth http://www.dartmouth.edu/~deutsch/Grammatik/Grammatik.html
German Language TV | German American National Congress https://dank.org/tv/
German frequency lists | Wiktionary https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists#German
GermanVeryEasy https://www.germanveryeasy.com/
The German Professor https://www.thegermanprofessor.com/
Learn German | DW https://www.dw.com/en/learn-german/s-2469
German dot net https://german.net/
German Language Blog | Transparent Language https://blogs.transparent.com/german/
Viel Glück!
Thanks for the kind words and awesome resources. Im glad to be learning here!
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Fantastic links library! Danke! I too have started the German course after a lot of French. Been wanting to learn German since high school days but am now finally getting to it, thanks to Duo!
What slamRN said. Just ignore them. We're happy to have you here!!!
Viel Glück!
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Don't take it personally; we have a couple of people here in the community that do that. We all know that and ignore them.
I wouldn't pay that much attention to the down votes. I've found that it is a pleasant friendly community generally. Most folks are cool and there's usually always someone that is willing to take the time to explain something to you if you ask. Good luck with your German, man.
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Still enough people around giving upvotes ;) I use downvote a lot - because many threads need it (crying, being useless...), on the other side there are some upvotes for people who want to learn a language...
Oh..and I forgot: Herzlich Willkommen!
what do you mean by 'downvoted'? Is that the wee arrows below your photo? I can only see 4 'upvotes'. What am I missing? Any explanations welcome. Thanks. (I'm pretty new here and haven't figured out how everything works.)
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I hate to tell you how to downvote, because I think downvoting leads to a less civil discussion. But here goes... If you click the caret under a post that points up, you're upvoting the post. If you click the one pointing down, you're downvoting.
Yes I'd worked that out. But the person who was moaning about being downvoted only had upvotes besiide the name. I couldn't see any downvotes so was confused about what the problem was.
as an experiment to see how it works I've just upvoted your post...
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Only the sum shows. Posts are frequently down-voted initially by the trolls and sometimes later up-voted out of the red, so to speak.
aha, thanks David, that explains it. Next question - I wanted to reply to your post but couldn't see a reply button. Any idea why that is?
Oh, and now I do see it. Weird. Sorry for all the daft questions, I'm sure I'll figure it all out soon.
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The reply button doesn't show up after the replies get too deep. One can reply to an earlier post and the reply buttons will appear on the intermediate posts.
One can then delete the enabler reply.
This is how I replied to you.
Yep, that's what i did already and I see how it works now. I hope other people are finding this forum user tutorial useful as well... Right, jetzt terug nach Deutsch lernen!
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Good luck!. I've been learning German off and on for over 35 years. More off than on sadly.
I started in DuoLingo to learn Spanish with a view to retiring in the Land of Eternal Spring, well one of them, it seems they are abundant. But I couldn't resit the urge to jump on German.
I took the placement test and then proceeded to test through the whole tree in one day. Yes, something like 4700 xp's. I continued to test through level three but I neglected the Spanish a bit.
Now I just keep my level-three German tree golden and work to get Spanish back to 100% and to finish the level three tree.
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In the interest of full disclosure: Keep in mind that it takes about the same amount of time to test out of a skill as it does to complete one lesson. Moreover, testing out of a level seems to reward about the same number of XP's as completing all of the exercises would do.
It isn't quite as crazy as it may have sounded.
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Yes plural nouns are all "die", but sometimes nouns we may consider to be plural in English are not in German, or vice versa. Maybe some native speakers can give some examples. Good question.
EDIT: And of course "die" is used for feminine singular nouns.
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Good for you! I finished the French course and started learning German which I had never tried before. I sometimes find the tenses difficult to remember (and they are not always the same as in French) but a native German speaker said it didn't matter too much - he was just pleased that people were trying to learn the language. I love it and hope you will too, so: willkommen!
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I walked from Kehl am Rhein to Strasbourg one vacation and bought a hot dog at a little Imbiss. Thinking it was a border town so the people would surely speak some German, I ordered in German. She answered in English.
For the duration of the whole silly affair, I steadfastly spoke to her in German - English is my native language - and she answered me in English. Until she gave me my food and said "Voila".
Yes, I know, this story is both silly and irrelevant. :)
