Learning German from DuoLingo: Day 85

Today is day 85 in my ongoing attempt at learning to read the German language through use of the DuoLingo application and web site. This post will describe progress made yesterday and today.

As noted yesterday, my progress on new lessons has been slowing recently because previously completed categories are programmed to gradually decay away from completeness. When this happens, I have to go back and refresh the categories to get them marked as complete again. This happened with three categories yesterday and three more categories today. Nonetheless, I did still manage to complete the "Questions 2" category and advance up to level 2 (of 5) in the "Family 1" category.

In Friday's post, I included some information from the Tips secion in "Questions 2". Today, I'll include some Tips from "Family 1". I'm not 100% sure if I've done this before, but I don't think so.

The first tip is on the pronunciation of the word, Familie. To an English speaker, the pronunciation might look similar to our own "Family", but that's not the case. The German - Familie actually has 4 syllables, and it's pronounced something like fah-meal-ee-uh. Next up is the pronunciation difference between Schwester (sister) and Geschwister (sibling/brother or sister). It's important to note the distinction between west in Schwester vs. wist in Geschwister. Finally, it notes that regional differences in language arose when East Germany was part of the USSR. An example of this is that "mom" and "dad" may be referred to as Mutti and Vati in regions that were formerly part of East Germany.

Some of the words and phrases from the "Family 1" section include the following:

German	English
der Vater	the father
die Väter	the fathers
Papa (Vati)	dad
der GroßVater	the grandfather
die GroßVäter	the grandfathers
der Opa	Grandpa
die Opas	Grandpas
die Mutter	the mother
die Mütter	the mothers
mama (mutti)	Mom
die Großmutter	the grandmother
die Großmütter	the grandmothers
der Bruder	the brother
die Brüder	the brothers
die Schwester	the sister
die Schwestern	the sisters
ich habe Brüder	I have brothers
ich habe keine Schwester	I don't have a sister
ich habe keine Geschwistern	I don't have any siblings
der Enkel	the grandson
die Enkelin	the granddaughter

And, here are my current scores in the application:

• Streak: 85 days
• Hearts: 1
• Crowns: 135
• XP Today: 149
• Total XP: 15005
• Crystals: 1153
• Lingots: 404
• League: Diamond
• XP in league: 692
• Place in league: 12
• Time left in league: 5h 24m 28s
• Followers: 4
• Words learned: 530 in app, 663 in web site

I knew it was coming, but I have to admit it's a little bit annoying to see the "words learned" number stuck at 530 for so many consecutive days. I do have to recognize that the practice on previously completed categories is definitely needed, as it is uncovering many things that have slipped my mind.

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

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

At this point, I have managed to memorize the codes for : ß, ä, ö, and ü just by typing these posts.

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.