Learning German from DuoLingo: Day 108

In my continuing attempt at learning to read German by using Steem and DuoLingo , today is day 108. This post is intended to describe my progress during the last three days.

Before I get into the last three days, though, I wanted to add an update that I forgot to include in my previous post. On Saturday, I was listening to a video by Nena called "Genau Jetzt" ("Right Now"). Musically, it's a techno-pop sort of sound that doesn't really appeal to me, but the nice thing is that it's the first of her videos where I know almost all of the words in the lyrics, so I did play it a few times for listening practice. Here is the video:

And now on to the last few days...

The big surprise is that none of my completed categories have decayed away from completion in the last several days. Every time I open the app, I expect three categories per day to be gone, but that hasn't been the case in almost a week now.

As previously noted, I ended day 105 by completing level 2 in the "Money" category. During the past three days, I have advanced through levels 3 and 4 and completed the same category.

On day 106, German-learning almost slipped my mind, so my 105 day streak almost came to an end. In the car, on the way to dinner, I remembered and asked @cmp2020 to complete an exercise for me in order to preserve my streak. Later that night, I didn't want to start a new league because the most competitive leagues seem to begin on Sundays, so instead I accessed the babbel.com web site and did some lessons there. Those lessons focused on basic things like greetings and introductions.

On day 107 (Monday/yesterday), I went ahead and joined the league for this week and completed the "Money" lessons at level 3. I also did two practice exercises in the conjunctions category.

Today, I completed all lessons at level four of "Money" and also the first lesson in "Dative pronouns".

Here is some information from the "Tips" section in that category. The point of "dative case" is that certain German verbs shift the receiver of an action into using the dative case. These include: "danke" (thank), "helft" (help), and sometimes "gehen" (to go) and "sein" (to be). These last two get the dative case when discussing how someone feels.

Examples of these include:

German	English
Er dankt der Frau.	He thanks the woman.
Sie helften den Männern	They help the men. (remember the trailing "n" for plural nouns.)
Mein Kind ist schlecht.	My child is bad.
Meinem Kind ist schlecht.	My child is not feeling well.
Die Frau geht zur Bank.	The woman goes to the bank.
Der Frau geht es gut.	The woman is well.

The "Tips" section also gives this table of dative pronouns

Nominative	Dative
ich	mir
du	dir
er	ihm
sie	ihr
es	ihm
wir	uns
ihr	euch
sie	ihnen

And here are some more words/phrases (which may be repeats) from the lessons on "Money".

German	English
Wie viel kosten diese?	How much do those cost?
Jeder Cent zählt.	Every cent counts.
Sie überweist zehn Schweizer Franken.	She transfers ten Swiss francs.
Ich kaufe keinen Garten, sondern einen Park.	I am not buying a garden, but a park.
Die Familie besitzt keinen Wein.	The family does not own any wine.
Die Familie kauft keinen Wein.	The family does not buy any wine.
Der Hund besitzt keine Katze.	The dog does not own a cat.
Die Familie besitzt keinen Hund.	The family does not own a dog.

And finally, here are my scores in the app as-of today:

• Streak: 108 days
• Crowns: 161
• Lingots: 449
• Crystals: 584
• Hearts: 2
• XP today: 54
• Total XP: 17693
• League: Diamond
• XP in league: 147
• Place in league: 21
• Followers: 4
• Words learned: 591 in app, 744 on web site

By the end of the week, maybe I'll be able to break 600 words in the app.

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.