Learning German from DuoLingo: Day 91

Today is day 91 in my continuing attempt to learn to read German by using the DuoLingo application and web site. This post will describe my progress during the last two days.

Continuing the recent pattern, yesterday I advanced to level 3 in the "Numbers 1" category, did practice exercises to restore three previously completed categories that had decayed away from completion, and also did some additional practice exercises in the "Conjunctions" category, where I continue to be especially weak.

Today, I advanced to level 4 in the "Numbers 1" category, but I haven't done any practice exercises yet. Since it is a week-end, I was able to do my learning earlier in the day, and I guess the categories hadn't had time to decay away yet. I am assuming that I'll have to do three more practice exercises later tonight in order to retain credit for all of the categories that I've completed.

Since there's really not much to write about in "Numbers 1", I'll just note down some general thoughts about the current state of my learning:

• I seem to be getting fairly good at recognizing the words I have seen and translating them to/from German.
• However, bringing the words to mind unprompted remains difficult. For example, if you ask me for a list of conjunctions that don't require word reordering (such as OSUDAD), I can't really do it.
• I still find myself referring back to the est-ten-ten and dust pneumonic devices, but far less frequently.
• A related memory-jogger that I haven't mentioned before, but have been using with a bit more frequency is "sind seid sind" for the order of the wir/ihr/sie (we/you/they) forms of "to be".
• I'm getting better at the accusative forms of "der words" and "ein words", but I'm still pretty bad at it.
• I had hoped to finish "Numbers 1" today, and move on to "Food 2", but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Tomorrow, then.
• I am still
  really bad
  at reordering the words around conjunctions that do require reordering.
• I am still weak at recognizing the correct gender for most nouns. (I'll still never forget "die Tür" (the door) which sounds like detour, though. ;-)
• I can't believe I've been at this for ¹/₄ of a year, already.

As to the content of the lessons, I think I forgot to include two words in a previous post. These are:

German	English
ein Dutzend	a dozen (neuter gender, unlike most other nouns in the "Numbers 1" lessons - which are feminine)
die Häfte	half (apparently, not, "the half")

I did want to write those down, in order to help myself remember them.

And here are some sentences involving numbers (remember, I'm learning, so mistakes are possible):

German	English
Ich habe elf Töchter.	I have eleven daughters.
Sie haben acht Söhne.	They have eight sons.
Es ist schon Zwölf.	It is already twelve.
Sie hat sieben Katzen und neun Hunde	She has seven cats and nine dogs.
Warum isst er neunzehn Äpfel?	Why is he eating nineteen apples?
Dreizehn Orangen sind schlect, aber sechs sind gut.	Thirteen oranges are bad, but six are good.
Ich zähle ein Dutzend eier.	I count a dozen eggs.

And here are my current numbers in the application:

• Streak: 91 days
• Hearts: 5
• Crystals: 800
• Lingots: 418
• Crowns: 145
• XP today: 56
• Total XP: 15,891
• League: Diamond
• XP in league: 886
• Place in league: 6
• Time left in league: 1d 5h 27m
• Followers: 4
• Words learned: 543 reported in app, 678 reported on web site

No new special characters in today's post, so the full table (so far) still looks like this:

Key press	character
ALT-0196	Ä
ALT-0214	Ö
ALT-0223	ß
ALT-0228	ä
ALT-0246	ö
ALT-0252	ü

If you want to learn a foreign language (or Klingon or High Valyrian), my recommendation for DuoLingo continues to be "thumbs up". According to the app, you can also use DuoLingo to learn dead or endangered languages like Latin, Navajo or Hawaiian.

My guess is that no one is going to learn to speak a language perfectly through DuoLingo, but I think it can provide a solid foundation that can be used to build additional knowledge through other, immersive techniques.