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Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

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Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#101

Post by fersarr »

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…

Thanks for the feedback! I'm going to be working on improving this so hopefully It will be up to your standards very soon. I do have some ideas to check and the comments from today helped a lot. Also, I'll ask my native friends for some help.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#102

Post by verst »

WalterBright wrote: post #97
verst wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Extreme? I read it when I was 6 or 7, and was amused by it. I have a number of books that are inappropriate for children, but Struwwelpeter isn't one of them.

Exaggerated might be a better word. It is stories meant to educate kids on proper behavior. The consequences shown in Struwwelpeter are just empty threats parents make - but depicted in that book.

I also read it at age 6 or so.

Many American parents would find it inappropriate for kids given how graphic and negative it is. I think it is a classic however.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#103

Post by cloogshicer »

WalterBright wrote: post #97
verst wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Extreme? I read it when I was 6 or 7, and was amused by it. I have a number of books that are inappropriate for children, but Struwwelpeter isn't one of them.

I'd call cutting a child's thumbs off as a punishment for sucking on them pretty extreme. Or being burnt alive for playing with matches. And yes, I'm German.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#104

Post by guenthert »

nescioquid wrote: post #90
guenthert wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the aftermath of WW2, it surely was the post-war reconstruction (in what became West Germany at least). Later on, US cultural exports from Disney to Mc Donalds dominated. Hollywood, satellite t.v. and now the WWW have major influences (cue "Amerika" by Fee). Germany isn't a small US, there remain significant differences (for the better or worse), but travelling (later immigrating) from Germany to US, the latter seemed eerily familiar and strange at the same time.

I'd wager that kids in Germany today (or for the last 40 years or so) can relate more to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn than to Struwwelpeter, not the least because the former was made into a (quite well done) t.v. show dubbed and broadcast in Germany.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#105

Post by [deleted] »

cloogshicer wrote: post #103
WalterBright wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extreme? I read it when I was 6 or 7, and was amused by it. I have a number of books that are inappropriate for children, but Struwwelpeter isn't one of them.

I'd call cutting a child's thumbs off as a punishment for sucking on them pretty extreme. Or being burnt alive for playing with matches. And yes, I'm German.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#106

Post by quitit »

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…

Paired with the autogenerated questions which require upgrading to check.

One might as well use Duolingo, they have an interactive story feature which I feel does a better job than this (despite how poor I believe duolingo is for learning a language.)

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#107

Post by codethief »

fersarr wrote: post #30
codethief wrote: post #13

Would it be possible to add different translation engines, like DeepL or ChatGPT? (ChatGPT in particular is often much better than all the alternatives.)

Just to understand, are you imagining the user picking the translation engines?

Maybe, yeah. (Not sure whether it'd be a global setting or one would choose every time.) The reason being that translation results can vary quite a bit.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#108

Post by WalterBright »

cloogshicer wrote: post #103
WalterBright wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extreme? I read it when I was 6 or 7, and was amused by it. I have a number of books that are inappropriate for children, but Struwwelpeter isn't one of them.

I'd call cutting a child's thumbs off as a punishment for sucking on them pretty extreme. Or being burnt alive for playing with matches. And yes, I'm German.

Hardly worse than Hansel and Gretel being popped in the oven.

The burnt alive story was not about punishment. It was about what could happen if you play with matches. Fire doesn't care how old you are.

As for the tailor, even I at 6 or 7 knew that wasn't going to happen. I didn't know any kids who were missing thumbs!

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#109

Post by yamtaddle »

nescioquid wrote: post #90
guenthert wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lots of US TV gets adapted for other markets. Check out how many US-original game shows have Chinese versions, for instance. Lots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_game_sho...

Sitcoms also get adapted pretty often. Talk and panel shows, sometimes.

We do the same thing in the US, just a bit less because we've got a really, really big domestic entertainment industry, so something's got to seem just right (in terms of "will this make money?") to get picked up, shouldering its way past all the US-original shows trying to get made, but it does happen. The Office, Power Rangers (half import, half adaptation), Iron Chef, Ninja Warrior (also has a German version!) and a bunch of others.

Re: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

#110

Post by yamtaddle »

xhevahir wrote: post #73

When I was studying German twenty or so years ago I got good results from reading lots and lots of children's books, starting with the really basic stuff--like books meant for kindergarteners--and working my way up to books by Erich Kästner. By grading the material in this way you can read a lot without getting tripped up by unfamiliar words every sentence.

I've got a book called Mein Erstes Buch ("My First Book"—apologies if I screwed up the spelling, I don't have it with me at the moment to check) that starts at "see spot run" difficulty ("Ball. Red ball. Red ball and Tom. Tom bounces the red ball."—stuff like that) and, through pictures and words, by the end, has you reading at maybe a 4th grade level (whole pages of text, only occasional images).

I haven't gone through the whole thing, but I did maybe the first third of it one day, some years back, and it did work—the farther I got, the slower-going it was, but I was learning enough to keep progressing, and the way it was designed, the older parts kept getting reinforced in a kind of spaced-repetition sort of way, so at least temporarily I did have all the earlier material in my head, 100%. Very little of it stuck long term—but then again, I probably didn't spend more than ninety minutes with the book. Not enough on its own to meaningfully learn to read German, but I bet it (or something similar) could be great as part of a larger program incorporating other resources. I was really surprised at how effective it was.

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