100 Days of Learning German!

Today is a milestone of sorts because it marks day 100 of my continuing effort to learn to read German by using the DuoLingo application and web site. Amazingly, I haven't missed a single day. This post will describe my progress since day 97.

Also, I'm moving this series from @remlaps-lite to @remlaps, since these aren't really "lite" posts any more... I'm going to try to reserve the @remlaps-lite account for microblogging.

Before covering my own progress, though, I'd like to point out this blog post from DuoLingo. They have announced the launch of a grammar tool for learners who are making use of their English-French language lessons, with English-Spanish expected later this year. I can tell you that I would love to have this in their English-German lessons. Hopefully I won't have to wait too long.

Now, on to my progress over the last three days.

In addition to using DuoLingo, I also spent a little time yesterday listening to German language videos on YouTube. This may sound corny, but I needed a change of pace, so I was listening to a random playlist of traditional German folk music that I found on YouTube. It's here:

It's not all German, but I just skipped over the ones that weren't.

As stated multiple times, my biggest challenge continues to be around ordering words to match with conjunctions. In addition to the language challenges, another problem I'm having now with conjunctions is that I have done the exercises so many times that I only have to hear the first few words of a question to know the answer, but I am still far from mastering the skill.

Here are the sort-of rules that I'm following in my own mind:

1. Is it one of the OSUDAD conjunctions? (Oder, Sonder, Und, Doch, Aber, Denn) If so, use the natural order.
2. If not one of the OSUDAD conjunctions, where is it located in the sentence?

• If it's in the beginning, the first phrase ends with a verb, the second phrase starts with a verb, and there's a comma between the two phrases.
• If it's in the middle of the sentence, the first phrase is ordered normally and the second phrase ends with a verb. The two phrases are separated by a comma.

Not sure if that covers all cases or not, or if it's even totally correct, but that seems to give me a fairly good baseline. I still have to think carefully to get it right, though. It's nowhere near reflexive yet (noch ; -).

To summarize my current state of learning at the 100 day milestone, I think I have four major areas of focus at this point:

• Conjunction ordering as noted above
• Memorizing the right gender for nouns
• Knowing when to use the dative and accusative cases (and this one is about to become more important)
• Increasing my word count

Here's what I can remember from a day by day perspective.

Day 98: As expected, I completed the final level in the "Food 2" category and also did practice exercises in three categories that had decayed away from completion. I also did one practice exercise in the "Conjunctions" category.

Day 99: Two or three lessons (zwei oder drei) lessons in "Dative Case", practice exercises in three categories that decayed away from completion, and practice exercises in "Conjunctions".

Day 100 (today): Finished level 1 in the "Dative Case" category. As feared, typing "der Frau" just feels wrong. I also did two practice exercises in "Conjunctions". As-of now, no categories have decayed away from completion, so I'll probably need to do three more practice exercises later tonight.

New words so far in this category include:

German	English
geben	give
zeigen	show
sagen	tell

Also, some phrases took me by surprise in the past couple days

German	English
wie bitte?	come again/pardon
Entschuldigung, wie bitte?	Ecxcuse me, come again?
wie viele	how many? (I've had this before, but it didn't "stick")
wie bitte, wer?	come again, who?

And, here are some dative case examples:

German	English
Er zeigt dem Vater die Küche.	He shows the kitchen to the father.
Das Baby zeigt der Frau den Hund	The baby shows the dog to the woman.
Das Baby zeigt die Frau dem Hund	The baby shows the woman to the dog.
Der Mann gibt der Frau einen Ring	The man gives the woman a ring.
Der Junge gibt die Äpfel den Pferde	The boy gives the apples to the horses.

Finally, here are my numbers as-of day 100:

• Streak: 100 days
• Hearts: 3
• Crowns: 153
• Crystals: 480
• Lingots: 433
• XP today: 105
• Total XP: 17042
• League: Diamond (as-in previous weeks, I waited 'til late in the day Monday to try to avoid the more competitive brackets.)
• XP in league: 105
• Place in league: 19
• Followers: 4
• Words learned: 570 reported by app, 712 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.