“An Epic Cognate”
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ich geneisse deinen artikeln sehr. ist es moegliglich etymologie der deutshen woerten zu diskutieren.
Ja, in den Kommentaren kannst du immer deine Gedanken teilen und fragen stellen. Aber ich bin KEIN Experte für Etymologie.
Well, it’s a fantastic idea, but there were several program glitches right off the bat. For example, during set up, in giving information about myself, if I didn’t click any of the boxes on a list (was not interested in any of them), it would not let me proceed to the next set of questions. And… after finishing the first set of vocabulary words for “relationships” (all of which I already knew) it would not proceed further. Just stopped working. Clicking the various buttons had no effect. And… it needs a test associated with it, so that it can be immediately harder and more relevant to those who have studied a while. I am at about an A2 level, and it looks like I would spend A LOT of time getting past old material and into something challenging enough to be interesting.
By the way, this is Lisa M., a regular longtime member — your site isn’t letting me log in today. Maybe it’s just not my day for computers?? :)
Have you been able to login by now?? Or should I reset your password? Let me know please :)!
Oh and just out of curiosity… are you on an Apple device? Because Cognate does seem to have issues there. (as do I)
I’ve only just started using it, and obviousely it is still in the early stages, but for some words, such as to graduate, it gave you the prompt of graduate, and sometimes it wanted graduieren, and sometimes absolvieren. I think it should accept either, and when it marks correct, maybe point out that there is a synonym fot it.
I completely agree. Synonyms need to be made clear, otherwise it gets really frustrating because it’s essentially guessing.
Also, “graduieren” shouldn’t be in there at all. Like… it’s not really a thing, at least not in actual real conversation.
The wording is “Abschluss machen in”.
I‘m afraid I wasn’t even able to sign up, after I clicked submit, the page froze. I tried several times on both Chrome and Safari, but no success. I was using my iPad, does the app not work on mobile?
Sorry to hear that, I think they might have some issues with iOS devices but you’d have to email them directly if you really want it fixed.
Just an update, in case anyone else is having trouble. Here’s what the support team told me (and it worked) :)
Apparently, there are certain special characters in the password field that are not accepted. Did you try a password with no special characters? The exclamation mark should work, but others can cause problems.
*** SIGN UP HELP ***
(making this bold, so people see it when scrolling :))
Thanks a lot for sharing this. I’m sure that’s been an issue for some people!
I spent about 15 minutes looking at Cognate. For the special interest selections, I found only lists of vocabulary words (i.e., no “lesson content” or “extra information.” The selections under “Essential Learning” seem a bit more interesting (and better developed), but mostly geared towards beginners — though to be fair, I did not spend a lot of time on this section, so perhaps it progresses in difficulty. The format is easy and intuitive, which is a pleasure.
When learning Nouns in Lessons the plural seems to be missing. Pretty essential imo.
Verbs – no additional info other than the infinitive? I’d say Perfekt form is essential even for beginners. I learn the präteritum also -and note if a verb is strong (ok thats not for people studying a1.1 but it becomes very useful later).
I couldn’t seem to and copy and paste the words so if i wanted to check the word in Duden or DeepL or whatever that doesn’t seem to be possible. I guess maybe this is to stop the content being copied, so I do understand – its not a big problem for me but it would ever so slightly impair my use of the site…
I’d describe myself as an intermediate learner (with a few holes in my basic knowledge ). It could be I’m not the audience but I couldn’t see anyway to make the content i was presented with more challenging. I skipped to lesson 45 and there were only a few words I didn’t recognise immediately and of those after I flipped the card there was only one i don’t think i’d come across before. How can i make it harder?
Relatedly I clicked on lesson 17 of Restaurants hoping for some more challenging vocab and I was presented with words like “das Frühstuck” and “die Pizza”.
I was interested that it covers slang and dialects. I feel this is something really lacking in formal education. But I couldn’t see anywhere I could engage with this kind of content?
Overall i really like some of the ideas and i may use the site during the trial a little but I think in its current form its not something I’d find a game changer for how i study
I totally agree about the plural and especially the ge-form and the preterite stem.
It takes up very little space and doesn’t cost much to add, but if it is missing, it creates a serious issue for a learner who wants to know them.
Thanks for taking the time and reviewing this, by the way :)!!
Hi guys, Alex, the CEO and one of the founders of Cognate, here. First, a big thank you to Emanuel for promoting our new startup, it is a huge help to us. Also a similar big thank you to all of you who have tried the product so far, especially to those who have already provided feedback. A couple quick things since mentioned in a few of the comments:
We know audio/pronunciation is very useful, and we have plans to add it as soon as possible (some time in the first quarter of 2023 is the most likely date). We wanted to have it for launch, but funds were limited (thankfully, we have more funding coming very soon). Audio will be one of the features included in a big product update we are planning for that timeframe (we will also address the other pain point some here have mentioned, whereby we will add a “None” option to certain quesitons so that you do not have to select a topic if none of them apply to you on a particular question).
If you guys have any questions or want to get in touch with us with any type of additional feedback, feel free to email us at [email protected]. We are all about bringing true customization to language learning, and we value your feedback!
Best,
Alex
That all sounds really good!
Thanks a lot for jumping into the conversation and being open to the feedback and criticism. That’s how it should be. Great to hear you have funding and thus more runway. The app and webapp market is really really crowded and the competition is high. But lots of things are rushed out and thus more like an MVP.
From my perspective, I would focus on really nailing the tailored vocabulary, and clearly the audio, and not focus on extending the grammar tree too much for now.
I feel like if you can really present users with vocabulary they need and are interested in, that’ll set you apart from like 99% of vocabulary and language apps out there.
All the best and I’m curious to see where you are in 6 months.
I see a lot of value in the plain-language grammar explanations in the basic part of the course. I found myself wishing there were example sentences, though, instead of just single words on the cards.
I think it would help too if some of the information was easier to find. The charts about pronunciation are a nice touch, but I have to remember that they’re in the Lesson Content of Lesson 1 to find them. (The charts themselves could be refined. For example, it says “i” is pronounced like “i as in ‘bit’ or ee as in ‘bee’ (ich, Hilfe, Juli, Kino)”. Probably not everyone will know that the first two words have a short vowel and the last two have a long vowel. Also “Loch” and “ich” have two different “ch” sounds.)
The grammar section of the library is a nice compact reference. For example, the colored bubbles for the prepositions. I really like that. It’s simple and it works. Only problem is, you have to already know something about grammar to understand it. If there was a link to the written explanations or something, it would be a really great resource.
Thank you, Emanuel! I love the concept. As others have noted, there are some areas that need development.
That said, I think Cognate has great potential!
Thanks so much! Yes, 1 and 2 are coming soon. As far as item 3, deeper customization will be an evolution so-to-speak (we will continue to get more specific as time goes by; but we are currently focused on adding more content to the topics we already have).
Our long-term vision is that the custom learning includes a type of media library, where you can get articles, stories, videos, etc. recommended to you (topic and language level appropriate). This is the funnest way to learn in our humble opinion.
Thanks for the free month (without which I would never have tried this, nor without your recommendation, Emanuel.
Still, for a “tailored” program, this is ridiculously not-tailored. I inputted that I was at the most advanced level that it allowed me to input, and it still tried to teach me words like “Frau” that I would know even if I never took a single German lesson.
The very least they should do is something similar to Seedlang, where you can choose to learn C1 vocab right off the hop.
Thanks for the feedback Marko. The Essential learning, where you will find basic words, is not tailored (yet), only the Custom Learning is. The Custom Learning has rarer words that include C1 vocab (it will also include some easier words, as the words are organized by topic, not by level, at least for now). We are also in the process of adding more advanced content to the Essentials, which will include more B2 and C1 vocabulary. Best, Alex
Oh, I think that would put me off as well, if I select “advanced” and then I get basic words like that.
So much so that I’d probably delete the app again/not come back to the site.
I think that’d be a good thing to tackle soon :)
Like most of the other comments my initial thoughts are the same. I don’t always have an interest in each of the categories and also without audio it‘s not very helpful to me compared to the other resources I like to use.
I will keep on trying for the rest of the month though and see what I can get out of this very kind free trial☺️
Just out of curiosity… which apps/systems are you using?
There is no audio! If I can’t improve my pronunciation and listening comprehension (especially of words that have English roots, but may sound different in German), I have only accomplished 50% of my goals.
Also, in at least one instance, the German/English sides of the flash cards were reversed.
In a weird way that’s a good sign to me, because it suggests that it’s actually humans who are creating the decks, and not just an algorithm that scrapes a dictionary. That would be free of mistakes, but also free of the human factor.
I could do with audio to help with my pronunciation; also it doesn’t recognise answers that aren’t the ones it’s looking for, e.g. Autor when it wanted Schriftsteller, even though it had just ‘taught’ me both! There’s a lot of good grammar info though.
This is actually a somewhat hard problem to tackle, at least as far as I can tell. For the “Autor, Schriftsteller” pair it’s fairly simple, but it’s a nightmare when it comes to verbs, where both, the German and the English side have multiple meanings that don’t really match up.
I feel like you’d either need some semantic search in the backend, an extensive database or (and that might be the easiest solution) some indication as to which word it is. Like giving the first letter for instance.
Giving the first letter would resolve most of those cases, I’m guessing.
The questionnaire won’t let you pass on a section in hobbies! I had to click to say I’m into fashion in order to get to the next page! (And I’m really not.)
I signed up and filled in the questionnaire (totally not avoiding writing the essay I’m supposed to be doing this morning). Anyway, the app has a problem in the questionnaire that it is impossible not to answer a question even if none of the answers apply. So, for example, the question ‘Are you interested in makeup, fashion, blah, blah?’ Has required me to tick one of them before the ‘Next’ button works.
Also, more specific to me and not really a bug, but… there is no ‘industry’ for academics. I had to tick education, but that isn’t really correct as I am not interested in teaching, just research. As I know quite a few people studying German for academic purposes, I don’t think it’s that niche (or Nietzsche, ;-) )
Ha, “Nietzsche”… that made me chuckle.
Skipping option is definitely important, but I think that’s an easy fix for them.
As for academics, do you mean that in the general sense of vocabulary you’d need when you’re working at university or do you mean studying German language and culture specifically, as a field. Like what Germanistik would be in German. That’s a nice and useful niche actually, with lots of specific vocab. Might make sense to add that, indeed.
As for your essay… those days are over. Just let ChatGPT do it for you :D.
I’m not sure ChatGPT will quite cope with my PhD yet, although it might be interesting to try :).
By ‘academic’ I mean working in a university, or another institution, but not necessarily teaching. So, I will need words about publishing papers, books, finding research material, going to German academic conferences, using German (academic) libraries. Although, your point about German culture is a good idea as I think I will also need vocab to do with German language and culture, especially German intellectual history. I’m learning German in order to read and understand German philosophers and theologians to then be able to write and publish about them.
Ah, I see… yeah, academic vocabulary actually makes sense to have as a branch.
What’s your PhD about? I love asking people this.
Recently, I heard the weirdest topic so far:
“The dynamics of the game tennis in movies”
So not movies about tennis, but movies where the director took inspiration from tennis and tried to transpose that into a movie.
So random! Seems like it’s gonna be a really short reference section, but who knows. Maybe there’s a whole corpus about this.
Hello Catherine, this is great feedback, thank you! We will keep this in mind as we add content to the academic-focused portions of the custom learning. We are continually adding content and we have only just launched, so there is a lot more to come. Best, Alex
Hallo,
Just a small typo – gingerbread is just one word
Thanks for the freebie, I’ll be trying it for sure (and sharing feedback)
Bis morgen!
Cool, keine Eile :)! Vielen Dank!
Servus Emanuel!
Das sieht interessant aus. I’m always on the lookout for learning/teaching tools. Rather than distracting from Cognate, I’ll email for your feedback on a related website.
These grammar suggestions may be helpful:
over night — overnight
the Nikolaus — Nikolaus
a shorthand — shorthand
one month — one-month
the idea and approach is — the idea and approach are
so I and also the folks — so the folks and I
just to make sure — just to be clear
Ich habe eine Rute bekommen–wie erwartet.
Tschüßi,
David
Ach David, dann gib dir nächstes Jahr mal endlich mehr Mühe, damit du auch mal was süßes kriegst :)!
Danke für die Korrekturen!