Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#51

Post by schroeding » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #41

kreas wrote: post #19

This is off to a great start. I've been studying German through various methods for around 3 years now. Mostly as a mental exercise but also because I love German television. For me, reading has been one of most productive ways to learn.

can you recommend any German shows? thanks!!

(All non-amazon links will probably require a German IP / VPN - you may find those shows on other streaming platforms, too)

Stromberg - German adaptation of The Office, but Bernd Stromberg (aka Micheal Scott / David Brent) is a bit of an asshole this time and it's not a paper company, but an insurance company.

https://www.amazon.de/Stromberg-Staffel-2/dp/B00ERLPUNA

Tatort - mostly serious show about police solving murders, produced by all of the local public broadcasters, e.g. there are Tatorts from Cologne, Münster, Munich, each using the regional dialect. "Polizeiruf 110" is the version of the ex-GDR, it works the same way. The Münster-Tatort is quite funny:

https://www.ardmediathek.de/sammlung/tatort-folgen-mit-thiel... https://www.daserste.de/unterhaltung/krimi/tatort/index.html

Tatortreiniger - a show about a crime scene cleaner in weird situations. If you know "The Cleaner" from the BBC: This is the original show it's based upon. The main character uses a northern german / Hamburg dialect.

https://www.ardmediathek.de/serie/der-tatortreiniger/staffel...

Hubert und Staller - show about incompetent bavarian rural police solving murders, heavy focus on comedy, bavarian dialect. The first few seasons are quite funny, the later ones are meh.

https://www.daserste.de/unterhaltung/serie/hubert-und-stalle...

Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter - "Generation War" outside of Germany, mini-series about a group of friends and their roles in WW2.

https://www.amazon.de/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.9aab6ee1-...

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#52

Post by Tade0 » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

I struggled with German in middle school because it was the only foreign language available there and I wanted to hone my English instead.

Ultimately what helped me to pass were dubbed animated series like The Simpsons. Live action stuff usually had too much background noise for me to follow properly.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#53

Post by thomasahle » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

cloogshicer wrote: post #26

Native German speaker here. My partner is a native English speaker and I was about to recommend this to her. However, it looks like a lot of this is auto generated/translated, making it sound unnatural or sometimes just wrong. For example: I looked at this example story [1] and the practice question is slightly bad grammar. It should be "Wer ging im Wald spazieren?", not "Wer ging spazieren im Wald?". Or: "Sie lachte…

Seems silly to translate short stories into German, rather than just using German short stories. Even if translation got incredibly good, the "real" German stories would have the extra benefit of teaching you about the culture.

On that note, do you have a recommendation for a collection of actual German short stories?

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#54

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 5:47 PM UTC

thomasahle wrote: post #53

cloogshicer wrote: post #26

Native German speaker here. My partner is a native English speaker and I was about to recommend this to her. However, it looks like a lot of this is auto generated/translated, making it sound unnatural or sometimes just wrong. For example: I looked at this example story [1] and the practice question is slightly bad grammar. It should be "Wer ging im Wald spazieren?", not "Wer ging spazieren im Wald?". Or: "Sie lachte…

Seems silly to translate short stories into German, rather than just using German short stories. Even if translation got incredibly good, the "real" German stories would have the extra benefit of teaching you about the culture. On that note, do you have a recommendation for a collection of actual German short stories?

Der Struwwelpeter

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#55

Post by AntoniusBlock » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

I learned to read German by working through "German for Reading" by Karl Sandberg. It's a great book. Work through it a couple times until the grammar is second nature, use the Anki deck "4000 German words by frequency" to increase your vocabulary, and start reading children's books (Emil und die Detektive, Max und Moritz, u.s.w) then move onto slightly harder books like Kafka's Die Verwandlung and Zweig's Schachnovelle.

Max und Moritz is hilarious btw, so don't skip it!

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#56

Post by Y_Y » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 5:50 PM UTC

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #46

Clicking on the words launches new tabs/windows into Google for translation. Very annoying. sending me to Google as a search link is super annoying. Some words (e.g., war, Tag, um) are not only in German, so the translations can be confusing. Translation can be done prior to displaying the story, and make the words appear as hover boxes, and even provide more language context. The example story is asking me to log in…

I had exactly the same thought about the new tab. Kindles and OSX devices (among others) can already give an intrusive popup with a translation or definition.

I'm an intermediate German speaker and even to me the language in the example story felt weird. I'm totally into the idea, and if the usability was better I'd probably use the site despite the non-idiomatic text.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#57

Post by dunham » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

phyrex wrote: post #40

tlhunter wrote: post #38

I taught myself some German by translating Die Bruders Grimm stories word by word, writing between the lines. Combined with other learning sources it seemed to work okay.

“Die Brüder Grimm” ;) A lot of those stories aren’t written in contemporary German and would sound very weird if you used it in your day to day language.

I recall "Von dem Fischer un syner Fru" being particularly weird. But there may be be editions that are translated into modern German.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#58

Post by amitheonlyone » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

I am experiencing an issue where if you click a word to get translation, a new Google search with 'translate "war" to english' opens. The problem is that it doesn't try to translate from German. Instead it translates the English word 'war' to Latin for some reason. I think a better search keyword is 'translate "war" from german to english'

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#59

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 6:05 PM UTC

samtho wrote: post #43

phyrex wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Die Brüder Grimm” ;) A lot of those stories aren’t written in contemporary German and would sound very weird if you used it in your day to day language.

As someone who learned German as a second language (so take this with a pinch of salt and feel free that I did this wrong/bad), I found older German works useful for the purpose of understanding sentence structure and grammatical case. Immersion introduces vocabulary and contemporary ways of speaking. Stuff like the verb in second position was not difficult for me and asking questions by leading with a verb is actual…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#60

Post by amjd » Wed, Apr 26, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

amitheonlyone wrote: post #58

I am experiencing an issue where if you click a word to get translation, a new Google search with 'translate "war" to english' opens. The problem is that it doesn't try to translate from German. Instead it translates the English word 'war' to Latin for some reason. I think a better search keyword is 'translate "war" from german to english'

Experiencing the same issue. Google is falling apart. It's choosing English as the source language with queries like this, and destination is any language which you may have used recently with translate.

A note to the OP:

translate "Fischerboote" to english - doesn't work

translate "Fischerboote" from german - works