Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories

Post by lubujackson » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 4:23 AM 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?

Post by watwut » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 7:21 AM UTC

yamtaddle wrote: post #110

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 thro…

Post by clbrmbr » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 10:43 AM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #96

fersarr wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't aware of LingQ, thanks for sharing it. Perhaps you are right about the targeting. Casual learners... but also busy people that would benefit from the format. We'll see.

"but also busy people that would benefit from the format" IMO busy people need tools that give the most learning per time spent, not tools that feel easy at the expense of pace of learning. These tools tend to require effort (e.g. LingQ, Readlang, Language Transfer) rather than ones that feel easy (e.g. Duolingo).

Post by yamtaddle » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 3:00 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #114

yamtaddle wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thro…

Would you be able to identify that book please? I would buy it, but cant tell which one it is from google search.

Post by fersarr » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 9:17 AM UTC

tempaccount1234 wrote: post #113

It‘s cute. Make sure to get some feedback from native German speakers to iron out they little mistakes or unusual word order. Also, never capitalize every first letter in a headline. Either capitalize every letter or use correct rules for which words are capitalized.