Show HN: Learn German with Games • Hacker News Board

rspoerri wrote: post #8

IAmBroom wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's gamified. People like winning games. People dislike taking tests.

It's still not learning, it's verification of existing knowledge. It might be more fun than taking tests, nevertheless you cannot learn knowledge by testing knowledge, you can only verify it. Only if the user answers correctly you might consolidate the already existing knowledge.

I mean specifically for articles, there are only three options. So, eventually you will figure out the correct one based on the feedback.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Games

#25

Post by weinzierl » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 4:26 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #10

tobi_bsf wrote: post #3

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.

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",…

Sometimes it's not regional but depends on the intended meaning. "der Schild" is the thing you wear for protection (shield), "das Schild" tells you the way (sign).

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Games

#26

Post by kleiba » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 4:39 PM UTC

nxor wrote: post #22

Somewhat related: if you think German is hard, prepare yourself for the friendly and talkative culture :)

What do you mean?

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Games

#27

Post by ghufran_syed » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 4:53 PM UTC

fyi, the account confirmation email redirects and ends up on a tab with address localhost:3000. looks like it did work, i was able to login after that, but many users may assume it failed and give up

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Games

#28

Post by vr46 » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

ghufran_syed wrote: post #27

fyi, the account confirmation email redirects and ends up on a tab with address localhost:3000. looks like it did work, i was able to login after that, but many users may assume it failed and give up

Took me to my local grafana instance, which was a surprise :D

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Games

#29

Post by ce4 » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #12

rwoerz wrote: post #7

Congrats. Some German natives may argue that the time short forms are wrong as they prefer "dreiviertel" instead of "viertel vor".

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...

It does make sense though (once you know where it comes from):

Before the ubiquity of watches, time was announced using church clocks and bell strikes. There's a big bell for hours (low pitch) and a smaller one for announcing quarters (higher pitch).

Signalling zero is not possible using "zero bell strikes", so 00:00 is signalled by 4 strikes of the quarters bell and 12 strikes of the hour bell.

Thus, the sequences go like:

11:15 1x quarter bell

11:30 2x quarter bell

11:45 3x quarter bell

12:00 4x quarter bell + 1x hour bell

Basically it makes sense then as all the quarters belong to the same hour.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Games

#30

Post by Lutzb » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

predictand wrote: post #15

rob74 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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",…

The intention with that game was to pick the artikels for the singular form of the words. I am a complete beginner in German, but I thought the artikel for plurals is always 'die'. However, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of exceptions to that rule. As for Geschwister, yep, that seems wrong. I will fix it!

I had "Jugendliche". "Der" can make sense for a male person. But "die" would also work, for the female person.