“Peeking into the kitchen (#kindagross)” *** Hallo ihr lieben, and welcome to day 15 of our Advent Calendar. And behind today’s door is actually kind of a little glimpse “into the kitchen”, where lots of German learning content online is prepared. And just like in a normal kitchen… it ain’t pretty Many of you probably kind of low key know at least part of this, but I’m sure most of you are not fully aware of the extent of it. So let’s take a look at How (a lot of) Language Learning Content is made Normally, if someone sets out to explain something, by for example writing an article, we would assume that their goal is to … explain it. Of course, there might also be a financial reason. A journalist for a science magazine for example doesn’t just write because they want to tell us something, they also do it because it’s their job. But you’d usually expect the person writing an explanatory piece to be somewhat knowledgeable in the field and ideally, they also have an innate desire to share their expertise. So someone writing articles about some grammar aspect of the German language should have a passion…
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Deine Seite wirkt nicht wie die Seiten, dass du beschrieben hast. Es ist sehr hilfreich. Danke
Danke :).
Ich benutze keine AI, weder zum Brainstormen, noch Regeln nachgucken, noch zum Schreiben, und auch keine Hilftools. Ich finde diese “Konsenssprache” im Internet, wie von Grammarly zum Beispiel, unglaublich langweilig.
Und ich gucke fast nie irgendwelche Regeln nach, sondern analysiere selbst, und ich schreibe für euch alle, nicht für Google. Es ist Google’s Job, meine Seite zu zeigen. Nicht mein Job, mich bei Google einzuschleimen.
Not a big problem with podcasts for German leaning.
When you search Spotify “learn German” some great podcasts come up! And their product placement tends to be excellent (the books written by the Deutsch mit Schmidt guy are top notch, and the resources recommended by Easy German are useful).
You got me interested. Keep it coming …
I’m hanging out for the section of our morality play where we establish “Meine Online-Akademie” (maybe this sounds slightly less ridiculous and overblown in German than in English?), and incessantly offer/force-feed a crumby pdf of “die bestestestestestesten Tipps zur deutschen Grammatik aller Zeiten” all for the low, low price of your email address and the endless spamming thereof.
On the positive side of the ledger, it’s actually great to discover folk who are really into what they’re teaching, and/or find a really interesting niche to populate, so that’d make a nice counterpoint at some stage, even if it’s in large part a simple soliciting of recommendations from your readers. There are, of course, a bunch of cool resources under, umm, “Cool Resources” in the header above, but I’d love to hear what content other learners enjoy working with on a regular basis.
Oh yes, 100% agree. But these people are usually NOT into SEO. What happens is that SEO experts, the really good ones, just pick a vulnerable niche to set up a site there, and they have the knowledge to push it beyond what the real nerd can manage to do. Like… the really good SEO people don’t do other people’s SEO. They set up web-shops and affiliate sites for themselves, one after another, just raking in passive income.
As for marketing jargon… yes, Online-Akademie is a good one, but my favorite one is “Masterclass”.
German Alphabet Masterclass – now for 19,99 instead of 199,- (real value) on Skillshare.com.
Ein offensichtliches, echtes Schnäppchen. Wo unterschreibe ich?
(And yeah, I now recognise what you’re pointing at regarding those SEO-centric domains: the tech realm is now bursting at the seams from the presence of all these parasitic sites, which simply recycle content from elsewhere. Ask a semi-geeky question and you frequently encounter a whole first page of results that all end up recycling the same post from stackexchange.)
I know a couple cool things if you like Youtube and subtitles.
Language Reactor: Chrome extension that lets you watch videos with subtitles in two languages. It takes auto generated subtitles and translates them. You can hover over a word and get a translation. Works with Netflix too. It can do other things, like recommending Youtube channels in German.
Language Learning with YouTube: A similar Chrome extension, but it does two pretty neat things. You can type a search in English and click a button to translate it to German. And it lets you search for videos with manual subtitles, which usually match what’s said word for word.
Filmot.com: A site that lets you search Youtube subtitles. You can pull up videos with subtitles in German, or German and English (it works with a bunch of languages). Side-by-side subtitles are below the video, so it doesn’t take up half the screen.
The neat thing is it finds subtitles where the search terms aren’t necessarily together. Youglish only gives you exact matches for “Einhörner sind dumm“. This shows you things like “Einhörner sind aber sowas von dumm“. The interface isn’t fancy, but it can really do a lot. This thread is helpful.
Wow, thanks a million for both the suggestions and the descriptions: I’ll definitely check a couple of them out. I’m presently at the stage where I can glean a decent notion of what’s being discussed at native speed, but vocabulary can definitely be a bit of a killer (as can speed of delivery, of course, when I fail to let go of a previously un(der)digested phrase quickly enough!). So these extensions should be right in my sweet spot.
Ja, es ist sehr interessant!
Speaking of SEO, Firefox is showing the Home button on your site as “YpvsDbjmzGfsnbo” … a one-step cipher code for all but the first letters of YourDailyGerman. Guaranteed to drive all the cryptographic Firefox users to your site!
Wait, what?!?!
I all looks normal on my computer with firefox. Why on earth would it do that?
Weird. I use the “developer” version of firefox on latest MacOS, so it’s something about those two, or the combination. No problem on Safari or Chrome, so it looks like it’s something in ff. Maybe not SEO after all
I looked into it a little more. There have been firefox issues with particular fonts in the past, and by toggling this on/off:
in the css, the issue disappears/appears.
Oh man, what a random glitch! I hate Firefox. And I hate Safari. These two browser consistently cause issues.
At least Firefox is actually trying to improve.
Aside from the font-rendering bug at hand, ff and safari have reputations for protecting users’ privacy, while chrome exists to serve targeted ads. I just wouldn’t expect that to make a difference on YDG, but clearly, ymmv. And not to drag this out too long, but I installed regular ff and confirmed that the font glitch happens only in the developer edition.
Chuck
Wood
Aber wie viel?
Und kann sie überhaupt?
Der magische 8-Ball sagte “My sources say no”. Aber bei den Bibern ist das anders… Zurücktreten!
Berry
Stimmt! Und das geschieht sogar im Fach Neurochirurgie auch.
Ja, leider. JEDE Nische wird besetzt, für Affiliate Marketing und so weiter.
OMG, ich kann nicht glauben, dass du uns mit einem solchen Cliffhanger zurückgelassen hast!!
Ich kann es kaum erwarten, die nächste spannende Folge zu lesen. (Und im Ernst, ich bin nicht sarkastisch, ich finde dieses Thema wirklich faszinierend, und im Gegensatz zu einem anderen Kommentator finde ich es überhaupt nicht ähnlich wie Farbe beim Trocknen zuzusehen – obwohl ich eigentlich noch nie versucht habe, Farbe beim Trocknen zu beobachten).
TV-Rechte sind schon an Netflix verkauft :). Chris Hemsworth spielt einen SEOler.
I hear something dripping in the background…sarcasm?….distaste? So glad you don’t fit into any of those categories described.
Hahaha, I think it’s a mixture of envy, bitterness and genuine rage. Like… I’d love seeing people cooperate and build great things to push humanity forward. Not sucking out value without really providing any.
This kind of behavior is making the internet worse and it’s going to get even worsererer with the trash AI content that’ll ChatGPT will vomit all over the web.
Das stimmt! Glad we have you. :)
Camille
I’ve been online since like ’96. There was a sweet spot somewhere in the 2000s or so where you could plug a couple keywords into Google and get page after page of interesting results. Now you have to fight to get past the ads and stuff the algorithm is pushing. Drives me crazy that searching in quotes doesn’t work right anymore. Youtube isn’t much better. I want videos on this one obscure thing, not things I’ve seen before and whatever the algorithm is hawking today. There’s plenty of people out there who know their stuff, if only I could find them. Ugh.
Oh really, quotes don’t do it either? Damn!!
I think the main issue really are the SEO people and “online magazines” that churn out content about anything, just to get clicks.
Not so much the Google algorithm, though that of course has an influence, too.
But yeah, I have participated in a few SEO mastermind groups this year and I can’t “unsee” this.
Ok, so I clicked on the green arrow before finishing the comment… duh!
You’ve managed to convey info abount web advertising, sales, etc. (which I find as interesting as watching paint dry) in a really fun, engaging, jargon-free manner, so I actually found what you wrote really interesting and now want to know a bit more!
On a completely different topic, how do you say that you “feel strongly/ have a strong opinion about something” in German? For instance, you would you translate “I feel strongly about Internet usage?”
Bis morgen!
Hallo,
The typo kitchen:
the extend of it (the extent of it)
One is is to just run ads (One is to just run ads)
hundreds of dollars of your niche (hundreds of dollars if your niche)
And some would say to keep the infinitive’s parts together in “to run” (so, just to run ads)
Camille :)
Yes, some would. Particularly native speakers of Latin, where the rule allegedly made some sense. It’s pretty much a dead issue in conversational English and is also disappearing even from publication norms.
I love how heated the discussions are in English about grammar and rules like this.
On Reddit or Stackexchange, the debates are intense and never ending, it feels like :).
I would say that Camille’s version really does sound like better style, which isn’t always the case with “correcting” split infinitives – but the way you wrote it 100% sounds like Normal Person English. So there you go
Got to the end of Elsa’s lesson, and thought “We made it, Camper! Not a peep about split infinitives!
Then, WHAM! Hurricane Camille comes along.
Anyway, I just looked at the first clause of this note, “Got to the end of…” and the question crossed my mind: Should I try in in German?
Easy one: Are you kidding me? Und mich Genormusse Befoolvonselbstmachen?
But then…”Got to the end of”. Wait…
Didn’t we just have a verb phrase for that a week or so ago? “Brought to completion” or something. I could USE what I learned. Was it from IndoEuropean word for “sculpt”. Somethingschaffen?
Scary! I got to keep at this. I might ACTUALLY learn something. At my age!
Cheers,
Mark
Please please don’t call it “lesson”. She’s helping me clearing out typos that I’ve missed, making it a better reading experience for everyone. She doesn’t do it to “lecture me” on proper English, and I think Camille didn’t mean that either.
That aside:
Genormusse Befoolvonselbstmachen
I tried, but I can’t see what you were going for here :).
What I’d say in this context is
“ich hab bis zum Ende gelesen”
or if you want it to sound like arduous work
” Ich hab’s bis zum Ende geschafft”.