Learning German from DuoLingo: Day 97
This is the 97th day of my ongoing attempt at learning to read German by using the DuoLingo web site and cell phone application. This post will describe my progress over the course of the past few days, since day 94.
Erdbeeren, Müsli, und Milch (Strawberries, cereal, and milk): Pixabay license, source
In addition to my daily lessons and practice exercises in DuoLingo, today I also listened to some more German language videos by Nena while studying the words. I was pleasantly surprised by how many words I was able to recognize in her eighties hit, 99 Luftballons. Unfortunately, though, I still have trouble distinguishing many of the individual words if I'm not reading the lyrics at the same time (Deutsche sprache, schwere sprache.). You may enjoy listening to the video while you continue reading.
Now, let's see what I can recall from DuoLingo during the last three days.
Day 95: I did three practice exercises to restore previously completed categories to completion. I also did a number of others, including - of course - more practice in conjunctions. Finally, I read a story and advanced to level 3 in the "Food 2" category.
Day 96: I advanced to level 4 in the "Food 2" category, did a number of practice exercises - including conjunctions, 3 to restore categories that had decayed away from completion, and also several other categories. I also read another story.
Today: I completed three lessons in level 4 of the "Food 2" category, but did not manage to finish the entire category. Hopefully I will tomorrow. I also completed a handful of practice exercises in previously completed categories, including three that had decayed away from completion. I still have to do practice exercises in conjunctions after finishing this post.
One thing worth noting is that I saw a grammar construction for the first time today where an adverb was distributed across two verbs. I am not sure of the particular example, but it was something like: Ich koche und esse gerne., which means, "I like to cook and eat." Since I hadn't seen that type of construction before, I had to guess at the translation, but fortunately I guessed correctly.
I don't have any new categories to write about information in the Tips sections today, so I'll just see if I can come up with any words or phrases that I haven't posted already. Remember that I'm learning and this is partly from memory, so mistakes are possible.
| German | English |
|---|---|
| Der Männer waschen Fische und die Frauen Kochen sie. | The men wash fish and the women cook them. |
| Magst er Müsli? | Does he like cereal? |
| Wann frühstücken sie? | When do they eat breakfast? |
| Die Kinder machen getränke aus Bohnen | The children make drinks from beans. |
| Mögen sie Pilze? | Do they like mushrooms? |
| die Beziehung | the relationship |
| die Beziehungen | the relationships |
| Ich esse, weil sie kocht. | I eat because she cooks. |
Finally, here are my stats as-of today:
- Streak: 97 days
- Hearts: 1
- Crowns: 150
- Crystals: 758
- Lingots: 428
- XP today: 84
- Total XP: 16785
- League: Diamond
- XP in league: 662
- Place in league: 14
- Time left in league: 1d 22h 22m
- Followers: 4
- Words learned: 562 reported in app, 702 reported on web site
There were 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.