“I’m just asking questions”
***
Two free lessons used this month
Want to keep learning?
Become a YourDailyGerman member and get unlimited access to all German
lessons and grammar practice tools.
Already a member?
Already a member? Log in here
Audio Speed
Dark Mode
One question should have had a “not applicable”. The question about learning break thru. I’m a native German of German parents but have lived in the US since age 3 + 1/2. So I use this site to increase my German vocabulary and learn some of the odder grammar rules.
Dein student, Waldemar
Oh, so you’re generally good for conevrsation and reading books, but you fill in some gaps here and there. I guess if you’re conversational like that you don’t really have these nice little breakthroughs.
I am coming to Berlin in early June. Anyone interested in a Your Daily German meetup?
Ps I picked not being able to move joyfully because that is how I would listen to music or I could listen to talking books and there is plenty of people who cook better than me so I would just have to eat their food
Ich nutze oft ChatGPT, finde es sehr hilfreich, und auch finde ich oft riesige Fehler. Zum Beispiel, ich redete damit über präpositionen – sehr hilfreich und interessant – und fragte über “nach,” und ChatGPT gab mir ein volles Essay zum Thema: “warum nach den Akkusativ nimmt.” [sic]
Tatsächlich habe ich ihm gefragt, warum nach den Akkusativ NICHT nimmt… ich suchte einen Hinweis oder Trick oder MindYoga. Es hat mir gut geholfen, wenn ich ihm dieselbe Frage über “zu” gefragt habe. Echt interessant!! Aber man muss schon sehr sicher sein.
OMG, I hope that was legible. I really need to practice writing in German more. It’s such brain exercise. I haven’t used much language learning integrated AI stuff, I used it for a second with some off-brand language app for French a few months ago and it didn’t spark my interest. ChatGPT itself like… I’ll ask it for a set of problems with very specific parameters, like simple sentences that use only masculine nouns and transitive verbs, and it’ll be about 70% there. So yeah, idk, it doesn’t seem super dependable to rely on. I remain a bit detached.
Also the pronunciation thing has never given me above 8% or so. It must be some issue with my microphone, meine Aussprache ist wirklich nicht schlecht! Aber das ist ok. It’s a cool function but I don’t mind not being able to use it
Ja, dein Text war total verständlich!!
8% at the pronunciation means that something doesn’t work. have you tried to playback your audio? Do you hear yourself there at all?
No, I don’t hear it. I’m sure it’s because I’m on an iPhone.
I think with the help of the comments here and on the other day I have narrowed it down to it being a file format issue. I’ll try to get that fixed next year.
I haven’t used ChatGPT within a language learning app, but I’m a pro subscriber, so have used it standalone.
Back in September, I used it to do a role play before visiting a doctor in Berlin for the first time (and was glad I did, since we wound up doing the entire session in German with medical language I needed to know).
More lately, I’ve been using voice mode to have practice conversations with it.
Great, you made it over that barrier of access :).
Do you know “Character.ai”? You can create your own chatbots there.
And for you, it might also make sense to create your own custom GPT, since you’re a pro sub anyway.
I’ve seen Character.ai, but haven’t played around with it yet. This weekend I created a technique for creating custom GPTs with multiple modes (conversation, correction, translation). So when I have time, I’m going to create a German practice GPT using that technique.
If you want to share it, I think lots of people would love it here :). But in either case, please do let me know how you like it!
I love questionnaires! Both answering, and asking questions. Cool! Make it in German next time!
Ohhhh, nice idea!!! I should have thought of that, but it’s the perfect format actually, because you can infer a lot.
I have had a lot of breakthrough moments when I was able to understand something like a song or podcast without any slowing down or translations, or have a normal conversation. Those are the most exciting moments for me.
It’s been kind of hard ever since I reached an intermediate level. I still learn new words and concepts every day and I practice speaking and listening a lot, so I must be improving. But once you have reached a point where you can speak and understand pretty well (which is a huge deal when it first happens), it’s hard to notice small improvements. Because I’m still not perfect or at a native level, sometimes I feel like my speaking and comprehension is not getting any better, but it must be! Just in very small increments that are hard to recognize.
Ohhhh the dreaded plateau :)! Increase the challenge and start daily writing practice. That’ll make a difference.
I do text with native speakers most days, but I don’t do any proper writing, so maybe that could help.
But I think I need the most practice with listening. When people speak clearly and without a lot of slang or obscure words, I can understand everything. But most speech is not like this, so I can have trouble with movies and conversations (if the person isn’t used to speaking with learners). For movies I use German subtitles, but then I just read and don’t listen anymore, so I don’t think I’m improving haha. Any tips for advanced listening comprehension?
For listening comprehension, turn off the subtitles and rewind as many times as you need to FULLY understand a segment or sentence.
As for texting… that really doesn’t count. Try to write half a page of coherent thought… that’s a different beast. If you come back to the writing a few days later, you’ll spot a lot of mistakes yourself.
Thanks for the tips. Both of those actually sound brutal, but I want to master the language, so I will try it and report back later!
Leaving the plateau needs new challenges, otherwise you might just stay there for years :).
The only way to get better at listening is to listen. It takes more time to learn than reading and writing.
It helps to listen to as many different things as you can, and change up how you listen. Some of the easier things to start with are YouTube channels for learning German, news like the Tagesschau, some podcasts (if they talk slower or have a transcript), and documentaries like the ones from ARD and Arte. Or audiobooks where you already know the story.
A 5-10 minute video is usually enough at first. I like to listen in different ways, for example:
– If the video has subtitles, watch it with subtitles first. Then listen again without. See how much you understand. It might just be a word or two, or even less. That’s OK. Then turn on subtitles again and see if you can pick out a little more.
– Harder version: Listen without subtitles first, then with.
– Listen just for specific words or sounds. Can you hear any forms of “sein”? Can you hear “ü” or “u”? Can you tell the difference between them?
– Listen with your eyes closed.
– Try with headphones and without.
– Adjust the volume. It might be easier to turn it up at first. Turn it down for more of a challenge.
– Listen to get the gist. Do you have a rough idea of what the video is about? That’s a win, especially when you’re just starting out.
– Listen to hear every word. Pick a short sentence at first. Listen to it a few times. Can you write it down or say it word for word? Rewind until you get it right or get tired. A few minutes of this a day is plenty.
– Listen to something as background noise. See if you can pick out a word every so often.
– When you look up a word in the dictionary, always listen to the pronunciation.
– When you’re watching a show or movie and don’t understand something, rewind until you can hear it. Look up words if you have to. It can make an episode take a LOT longer and it can be exhausting, but it works.
Thanks for your thoughts. I am actually already an advanced listener, I can *always* understand the gist. And then if the speech is clear and free of obscure words AND I am 100% focused, I can usually understand every word. But a lot of times everyday speech is not simple like that, so that’s kind of the problem I’m running into. So some of these tips could still help me.
Actually my top recommendation for beginners would be listening to music, but I’m a musician and a really music-oriented person so that might not apply to everyone. But I got really, really into this one German band (Broilers) and have listened to the point where I can sing along to most songs. And I feel like my pronunciation and ability to hear different sounds has gotten exceptionally good because of that. Not to mention there are a lot of words and phrasings that I will never forget because I have a song to remind me of them. The singer usually enunciates very well, so that helps a lot!
I still have to settle for the gist sometimes (z.B. wenn jemand im tiefsten Dialekt spricht). But yeah, people tend to talk fast, leave sounds out, smush words together. Talking fast is one thing. That gets easier the more you listen. It took me probably several hundred hours to start to get comfortable with that. Maybe more.
The sound changes are another thing. “Einen” can sound like “ein,” “gehen” is “gehn,” “das ist” can sound a lot like “das’s” (with a short and lazy “a”). “Machen wir noch mal” might sound like “ma’n mer no ma.” Deutsch mit Benjamin is good for learning some of that. He’s on YouTube. Once you have an idea of what can happen, it’s just a matter of listening a lot, and carefully. I’ll pause, think about what I heard, and smash repeat. If I hear something right, I’ll listen to it again to sort of memorize it.
Music can be a fun way to learn. I like that too. Anything you’re interested in will do. Unboxing videos, tutorials, band interviews, you name it.
Yeah, the shortening of words might be part of my troubles, although luckily music has also started to give me a feel for that because they do that in songs too.
The first ones you mention aren’t so bad, but the last one, where the whole sentence is just smushed together, is hard to understand. I don’t see how native speakers can understand it so easily. I don’t feel like most people shorten sentences in such an extreme way in English, and when they do, I’d have trouble understanding even though it’s my native language.
It can happen in English too. A couple examples I thought of:
– Whatchadoin? (What are you doing?)
– C’mere f’r (a) sec. (Come here for a second.)
– A lod’v’m’r missing. (A lot of them are missing.)
There’s a little bit of a vowel sound in some of the places where I used ‘. But it can be hard for non-native speakers to understand.
The big advantage in your native language is that you’ve heard things so many times that you’re used to most of these things. And you can often guess what people are going to say from context. You don’t have to think about every sound, your brain just fills it in for you.
With a foreign language, you have to learn it from the ground up. It helps to watch videos that explain how people really talk. But a big part of it is just reading and listening as much as you can so you know what people say in different situations. Then when you hear something that sort of sounds like what you know, you can start to guess what it means.
I really had trouble with American English when I first encountered it in real life (not on screen). Like… I would understand 70% of a movie, 95% of a newspaper, but 50% of American small talk.
For me, doing this stop and rewind stuff with movies was really helpful. I have watched Futurama directors commentary tracks like this and it really helped.
It always helps to hear that the same issues happen in reverse because I always feel like Germans are perfect with their English :D At least when it comes to comprehension, because I hear Germans make mistakes sometimes, but they always seem to understand everything. But I guess everybody has to struggle the same amount at some point!
The German you meet that you talk English with…. that’s different from the Germans overall :).
I was fairly fluent when I was in the states but I still couldn’t understand what people were saying in “Departed”. Like… no chance. So yeah… be easy on yourself. I’m sure you’re doing great!
What did you think of the director’s commentary? I never got around to watching it, but maybe I should check it out.
Futurama is one of those shows where the German translation is good, but I miss the original voices.
Oh yeah, the original voices make it like twice as funny!!
The directors commentary was nothing enlightening but it was a few people chatting in “normal” American English, so it was a great resource and it had subtitles because I had a … ahem… DVD!!
You’re right. I also always think that it must have been even harder than this learning our first language from the ground up as babies, when we had nothing to fall back on. We just can’t remember the struggle! I know babies’ brains are wired for language learning, but it takes years for them to say and understand much and there’s no way it’s not frustrating.
Exactly!! Babies spend years in a VERY welcoming environment and they MUST learn it because they have no fallback. If you as an adult can get yourself into a situation where you CAN’T use your native language and people around you talk slow and repeat stuff all the time 24/7, I think you’ll also pick up the language within 4 years to the level of a 6 year old. I mean… they can’t even really do passive or conditional as toddlers… adults can get to those much faster.
But babies do pick up on differences between “aus” and “raus” much faster. This stuff comes out correctly even at 2 years old sometimes. Priorities :D
Haha yes, with words like that they have the benefit of repetition, slow and patient speech, and encouragement as you said. But on the other hand, they can’t read your blog for the in-depth explanations :D
Oh, in my perceptions, English speakers shorten their sentences and words MORE than Germans do.
This weird version of British English that doesn’t seem to have any consonants anymore for instance.
I really think as a native speaker one just doesn’t notice how much is actually missing or how much the original word has been altered because the brain “completes” all this and makes it feel “familiar”.
Okay, I’m gonna be really blunt right now :). Some tough love, so to speak:
Understanding the gist is NOT advenced listener, imo. Understanding 85% of the words on the first go is an advanced listener, in my mind.
Like… you need to get to a point where for every statement you feel like “Yeah, I could transcribe this now.”
(I’m just trying to push you beyond your plateau, of course understanding the gist is already awesome and a great achievement. But don’t get too cozy there.)
I am okay with bluntness :)
I think advanced because that “gist” thing is only when I’m listening to something more difficult. If I can concentrate, there are many normal speakers that I can understand 100%. I tend to find podcasts and stories pretty easy to listen to, because the speaker will usually make an effort to speak clearly. These are not learner podcasts and stories either, but ones intended for native speakers. But movies and TV are more like normal speech, and in these cases there will often be missed words and phrases depending on the speaker.
I watched a show called “Oh Hell” where the main character’s “thing” seems to be talking very fast and smart, and I can barely understand anything she says without the subtitles. That was a good way to bring me down a peg when I thought I was doing so well :D
Maybe that’s not advanced yet? But I’ve never lived in Germany or even taken a proper class, so I feel pretty good about my progress!
Ahhh, okay, I see.
One thing about German movie and series production that I have noticed is that they have a habit of mixing the ambient noises in REALLY loudly.
It might also be that they’re old school and try to use set audio for most of it, but clothes rustling, key clanging, steps, drawers opening…. all that is REALLY loud in a German movie. And then, actors often speak in this weird pattern or “rush-pause”. So they say their line really fast and then pause to emote.
Long story short… I do have problems with German series and movies regularly too, because the loud ambient noise swallows up the mumbles rushed sentence (that IMO, they say that way because they can’t really act.)
The other thing I would say is that listening and speaking can reinforce each other. You have to listen a lot to learn the sounds so you can say them. And working on your pronunciation can help you hear the sounds better. Whether you have a tutor, watch pronunciation videos, record yourself, watch yourself in a mirror, or just tune into the sound and feel of your voice.
That kind of focused speaking practice seems to make it easier to hear the sounds right. Like, “oh, I thought that was an “u”, but now that I tried to say it, I can see how it’s really “ü.” That sounds kind of weird now that I wrote it out, but I noticed that was happening to me and thought it was kind of interesting.
What I’ve been doing that has been helping for listening comprehension is watching the series Berlin, Berlin on Netflix. The characters banter a lot and one of the characters speaks with a Berlin dialect, so it’s helping me understand everyday spoken German better.
I watch it without a VPN when I’m in Germany or with a VPN set to Berlin when I’m not, since it’s not available from a US IP address.
As coleussanctus mentioned, I watch it once with subtitles, during which time I look up any word or phrase I don’t understand, and then once without, where I focus on pure listening (and rewind if I don’t understand).
Since the show is 25 minutes, in theory it should take me 50 minutes to watch the show twice. When I started, it would take me 90 minutes and now I’m down to around 75 minutes on average. Tracking this helps me see progress even when it feels like I’m not making any.
I also installed the Reverso plugin for Netflix subtitles, which makes it much easier to look up words and/or translate entire phrases directly via the subtitles.
Wow, tracking the time per episode is a great way to track incremental progress that I never would have thought of! I’ll start doing that since I do have a couple of shows and longer videos saved that I think will become my main listening practice atm.
I use ChatGPT mostly as a coding partner. But when Duolingo said I should have used sollten instead of sollen, I asked the AI to explain the difference, I liked the response. (Maybe because it said I was right and Duolingo was wrong ;-)
Lots of time I don’t think Duolingo is the only right answer. I liked it when I could ask questions and people would answer. How do you ask ChatGPT?
You have to have the plus max subscription (or whatever it’s called). Then you can ask for any answer. But you can get the same service, based on the same AI (GPT4) for less money elsewhere, like Langotalk.
In my experience these “explain this” things are 70% hit and 30% nonsense. Which is too bad a quota in my opinion. The old, crowd-sourced knowledge base was FAR superior, imo.
The AI thing is a very interesting question. I think there’s no question in my mind that it has the potential to be truly revolutionary in the field of language learning in the future. I would not be at all surprised if, before not too long, we’ll have access to 100% available personal AI German coaches, who provide interesting conversation practice intermingled with detecting areas of grammar and vocab that you need more work on, via both written and voice interfaces. But we’re not there yet.
But AI is already providing genuine value in some narrower areas of language learning. My personal favorite is in a language-focused flashcard app I use called DuoCards, which provides automatically generated AI explanations of grammar and usage for German words and phrases. It instantly solves the biggest issue with flashcard apps, that you have a German word and an English counterpart, but the translation is ambiguous, or you’re not sure which contexts you’d use that word in vs alternatives.
I’d love to hear from people about other examples where the AI provides genuine value!
Ohhhh, I have been using Duocards for almost two years, and I complained to them that they didn’t offer a monthly plan. Now they added one so I’ll sign up. I like their UX.
I do not like the AI explain words stuff though. This is pretty much a plug and play service coming from OpenAI, lots of apps have it, and it’s equally meh on all of them, because it often gives wrong or misleading information. Do not trust what you read there!
I wanted to add a few more thoughts that I have on AI.
I think it is a terrific tool to have conversations already, especially with the voice option that openAI recently added.
There are also “wrapper” products like character.ai where you can customize your own chat buddy and the custom GPTs that openAI rolled out a few weeks ago also allow for making a language learning chat companion easily.
The biggest hurdle there for most users is to find it or go through the process of setting it up.
What I don’t think AI is good for explaining grammar and words to learners. A system like that should be 95% correct in what it says, but GPT just sits at 70%, but it sounds super convincing.
In the Easy German discord forum, someone had asked ChatGPT something and the response was 100% wrong advice.
Learners can NOT judge that in any way, so I really DISLIKE all the apps and programs adding this feature to their product. Yes, it’s easy to add, yes, it “sounds” cool, but the system isn’t there yet. maybe it never will be, because it doesn’t have a “feeling” for anything.
Also, you’d need to spend some time and resources to custom train or fine tune it.
On Langotalk, which I generally like, there was gender assigned to verbs and all kinds of other weird information because if you do this kind of “explain the word to me” thing, you MUST really fine tune the prompts for each word class, and best would be a few shot training for each of them.
That’s also why I haven’t integrated it further at this point. I wanted to add the “example generator” to the dictionary…. I’ll probably still do that.
But asking it for three sentences with “ausgehen” in the sense of “turning off” always gave me 50% wrong, unidiomatic results, so yeah… long story short, it’s great to chat with and it’s fairly good with broad general grammar stuff, but the more specific you get, the more nonsense you’ll receive and that’s the last thing a learner needs :)
The issue I have with this site is that when I subscribe to get notified of answers to my comments, after a while I start getting notified of every comment on that article.
I agree. Not sure why that happens.
Wait, but at first it’s only for your comment and then after a while it switches? Or is it always for the entire thread?
I think at first it’s just my comment replies, but I can’t be sure. It definitely ends up with me getting a mass of mail about other people’s comments and I end up unsubscribing entirely from that article, hence I missed your comment here!
Actually, do you know the comment notification for members on the site? That gives you a bell when someone replied to you, but it’s on the site and doesn’t go to your inbox.
Maybe I’d better rely on that in future!
Yup, I added that actually mainly because I felt like these emails were not the best way. People get enough emails anyways, and an answer to a comment here is not THAT crucial. And if it is, one might as well go and check on site :)
I’m one of the relatively few so far who picked music.
Books, it would be a loss, but I’ve read enough to last a lifetime. And there’s plenty to read other than books.
I’ve had to do without movement and it sucks, but I can’t imagine life without music. It takes you places, cheers you up, lets you vent emotions and make new connections. If I could choose, one of the last things I ever hear would be my favorite music.
Cooking was the easiest one to cross off. If you said home-cooked food, it would be harder. Depending on the cooking talents of the people you know….
I think it depends a lot on the job. If you have a job that includes a lot of moving, it’s fine, but for me, working on a computer, I cannot not move in my free time. I’d get sick.
I was curious about cooking because I imagine some people REALLY love it and I wanted to know the percentage :)
If you had asked a few years ago, I might have picked that. Sometimes I would spend all day in the kitchen when someone had a birthday or whatever.
Have you had any regular problems with the site?
I don’t know if its a “problem”, or just the nature of where you are with this project, but my biggest issue i run into is the size of the dictionary – specifically the amount of missing words when i search. I mean, i know you are just one person and probably boring just to be adding words and i can go elsewhere so its not like being totally helpless but if you are looking for feeback thats mine : )
Did you have some sort of breakthrough moment with your German?
Lots of small ones for sure.
Finally learning to pronounce the “betonnt R” properly was definitely one of them, although that was less of a specific moment and more like something gradual. It felt impossible at one stage
My teacher telling me “du shaffst es mit links” about the b2 Prüfung was pretty nice.
Figuring out konjunktiv 2 with modal verbs in the past and then actually using it in conversations… It seemed so hard at one point … very much down to your articles.
And yeah, so many mini-breakthroughs where you’ve explained words i’ve been struggling with in the comment section. Definitely a lot of “aha” moments. Some words have been harder than others so I just wanted to say thanks again for this!
If you could only keep one of the following for the rest of your life, which one would it be? (I know this is hard)
Movement- if I can listen to music while dancing then I can still listen to music. I guess listening to audio books would not be reading books. And preparing food is not cooking food so I would just prepare food (salads etc )at home and get takeway when I wanted something cooked…
I have the opposite problem with the dictionary, how to find everything that’s in there. I’ve said it before, but I’d happily read it cover to cover.
Sometimes when a word isn’t there, it’ll show up later and that’s kind of exciting. The explanations are easy to understand, often funny, and it’s something you can’t find anywhere else.
I kind of like how this site is labyrinthine tho. Like, when you find a great article you didn’t know about that is burried deep in the depths of the site. its its kind of like when you find a secret area in a video game…
I do like this aspect as well. It’s a fine balance, but I’m okay with the Advent calendar posts being “easy to miss”. But that exercise for conditional should be part of the main “route” for sure.
That said i do see fantastic articles where people haven’t commented for a long time that aren’t immediately accessible through navigation and i suspect its because the articels aren’t so easy to find. For example there is a great quiz for Konjuntiv 2 that loads of people would enjoy – when you click on “Grammar > Conditional it doesn’t show up. You have to really dive into the articles to find this….
The dictionary is another thing though. I think if you search for a word is the dictionary via the search tool its there or not in my experience…
Happy to hear that, that’s the idea of it and that’s why it fills up so slowly.
It has over 10k entries so, so you’ll NEVER know them all Muahahahahahahah
Ohhhh, debate classing your way around the choices.
NO, no music while dancing.
And NO audio books do count as “reading books”.
And NO, preparing a salad also counts as “cooking”.
Takeaway for all eternity (unless you have the right partner of course).
So which is it going to be then, vvvv???
Choose wisely!
On a serious note…. yes, entering new things into the dictionary is a bit tedious, mainly because the numbers are soooo huge by now that I barely feel like I did anything, even if I did 20 entries, and spend 1,5 hours. Same with the failed searches that I track. I don’t do it for two weeks and there’s like 3.000 entries in there. I go through 500 of them (many are typos) and then my head is fried, but I barely made any progress :)
Working on large numbers is tiring indeed. But i
I also want to add notes that are helpful and make sense, so I can’t just bulk rush through it.
But yeah, my goal a while back was to get 85% hit rate, which I do have at this point, but for you it’s probably more like 60% because you look up very specific things :).
Oh well… I’ll make it to 20.000 one day and then I should sit comfy at 90%+ hit rate.
ha, well to be fair i am pretty sure the definition of dancing includes music , not sure that is even up for debate ; ) That said i think doing some form of exercise would be the most beneficial, mentally and physical, so i’d go with that anyway….
” the definition of dancing includes music”
Oh hell no!
You need to go to some more dance performances in Berlin :D
Ich habe gerade an etwas gedacht: Im Sommer bin ich immer am See. Oft ist auch da ein Mensch, der Tanzer sein durfte. Das erstes Mal, dass ich ihn gesehen habe, dachte ich, er wäre von Wespen attakiert, weil er sich so krass bewegt und ich keine Musik gehört habe. Dann bemerkt man, das er Kopfhörer drin hat, und keine Wespsen sichtbar waren…
You missed health on the last question – Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it. Seneca
Completely true, but I skipped “health” and “love” because I want everyone to have “more” of that for next year :). I wanted to go for things that you don’t really necessarily need on a base level.
Hallo,
Regarding the questions about the site, I have to say that the AI features have helped me A LOT, you suggested once that I write something in German every day, but without someone to check, it’s hard to take further steps. Using the AI sentence corrector to check made a huge difference :) I know it’s not 100% accurate, but it’s allowing me to progress, albeit at a steady pace, no breakthrough moments… but steady progress is great… so I think this is a good one to share with our friends here on the blog, I do advise everyone to at least try it and see if it helps, it’s certainly helping me :) And the example generator is also great for learning vocab!
As for the personal ones, the one about choosing between music, sports and reading was REALLY hard (not including cooking here because I can’t cook to save my life). In the end, had to go for sports, which I enjoy but just as much as music and books really, for the very practical reason that without sports one gets fat… and saggy… and… OMG not even worth thinking of all the nasty consequences ;)
Bis Morgen!
I picked “movement” too, simply because I know if I don’t do it for fun/leisure for too long, I will get cranky and the body will start going into couch mode.
You’ll like another door this week if you like the sentence corrector. If you’re using Chrome, at least ;)