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Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

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Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#81

Post by thayne »

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?

I suspect these might be generated by chatgpt or similar.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#82

Post by yorwba »

clbrmbr wrote: post #34
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…

I think this can be solved through asking the LLM to improve the output itself. I asked GPT-4 to "provide more idiomatic and grammatically correct versions. Consider whether each phrase sounds like German," and got the following output: Wer ging im Wald spazieren? Max war sehr dankbar für Lisas Hilfe und lud sie zum Eisessen ein. Sie gingen zu einer nahegelegenen Eisdiele und verbrachten den restlichen Tag zusammen.…

I'd use „hatten viel Spaß zusammen“ instead of „schöne Zeit”.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#83

Post by verst »

guenthert wrote: post #72
verst wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent recommendation. I always use that book to explain to people how I grew up very differently from folks in the US (where I now live). English: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24571 German: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24571/24571-h/24571-h.htm

My sarcasm detector is failing me. Mid 19th century Germany (around the time the Struwwelpeter was written, that would have been the Deutscher Bund, when nationalism was seen as progressive) is culturally, sociologically more different from late 20th century Germany then late 20th century Germany from late 20th century USA methinks.

German parenting is very different from American parenting. Struwwelpeter is an extreme, but it does capture the essence of the tough love approach, emphasis on following rules (or suffer the consequences) etc

Certain elements of German culture did not just develop in the last 150-200 years :)

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#84

Post by wwilim »

I like the google translate powered click-to-translate, truly the best kind of low-effort functionality.

You can get even more bang for buck if you add a dropdown at the top to select the target language - you will now support learners from every country in the world in 3h of work tops =)

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#85

Post by monksdream »

I have found ChatGPT a great tool for that sort of task (I study French).

A typical book meant for students trying to improve their reading skills usually starts from a certain level which is fairly high for me currently.

By using an LLM you can tailor-make a story i.e. define your level (“Give me a short story in French, for someone with very limited vocabulary” or “for a seven-year old”) and then adjust accordingly if it’s too easy/hard, ask to use only grammar you have studied (“only using present tense”), pick a familiar topic (“about a someone who studies Physics in college”) etc.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#86

Post by crucialfelix »

clbrmbr wrote: post #36
clbrmbr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this can be solved through asking the LLM to improve the output itself. I asked GPT-4 to "provide more idiomatic and grammatically correct versions. Consider whether each phrase sounds like German," and got the following output: Wer ging im Wald spazieren? Max war sehr dankbar für Lisas Hilfe und lud sie zum Eisessen ein. Sie gingen zu einer nahegelegenen Eisdiele und verbrachten den restlichen Tag zusammen.…

I tried the first paragraph, too. Seems to have made several idiomatic improvements: Es war ein sonniger Tag im Wald und ein Mädchen namens Lisa ging spazieren. Sie hörte plötzlich ein Geräusch und drehte sich um. Sie sah einen Jungen namens Max, der in Schwierigkeiten war. Er hatte sich verlaufen und wusste nicht, wie er zurück zum Parkplatz kommen sollte. Lisa entschied sich, ihm zu helfen und sie begannen gemeinsa…

I learned more from comparing these two paragraphs than from reading the original.

Little things like where the comma goes, sich verlaufen vs sich verirren.

Ich soll mehr mit le Chat auf deutsch quatschen.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#87

Post by rahimnathwani »

I recently started using LingQ for this. It's effortful rather than easy, which makes it a bit harder to develop into a habit, but the technique seems very effective, and the platform works well both when importing content and when studying it.

Maybe you're targeting people who are more casual learners, and aren't willing to do stuff that feels hard?

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#89

Post by fersarr »

uvbu wrote: post #88

Looks cool! Though, I'd like to note that the fisherman story is not only unidiomatic German, but also contains a bunch of mistakes

Thank you for having a look! Sorry about the issues with the fisherman story, I'll ask my native friend to help improve it. Hopefully I'll get better at this!

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#90

Post by nescioquid »

guenthert wrote: post #72
verst wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent recommendation. I always use that book to explain to people how I grew up very differently from folks in the US (where I now live). English: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24571 German: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24571/24571-h/24571-h.htm

My sarcasm detector is failing me. Mid 19th century Germany (around the time the Struwwelpeter was written, that would have been the Deutscher Bund, when nationalism was seen as progressive) is culturally, sociologically more different from late 20th century Germany then late 20th century Germany from late 20th century USA methinks.

I started watching German television on YouTube a couple years ago and had a very eerie feeling when I discovered the ZDF Heute Show and Harald Schmidt's show (modeled after the Daily Show and David Letterman, respectively). It might seem trite to point out a couple of television shows, but it was certainly a surprise to me. Do you think the similarity owes more to US involvement in post-war reconstruction or general globalization?

One of the things I like about the Heute Show is that the gags often point at some cultural thing I knew nothing about (in fact, I think it was one of those gags that led me to reading Stuwwelpeter in the first place). Similarly, I encountered something last week that prompted me to read Max und Moritz. So I assume these things still have cultural relevance, even if as a sort of short-hand, but I certainly see your point (edit: at least superficially).

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