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Hello everyone,
And welcome back.
So YourDailyGerman Flashcards are coming very soon.
In a way, they’re already there. It’s just not complete yet and I have to finish a few things like deck creation and stuff like that, BUT… the core of the flashcards is of course my dictionary, and I have made some significant updates and upgrades there.
You might have seen them, but many of you are new or just occasional visitors and are not even really aware of the dictionary at ALL, so today, I want to introduce the recent updates, which are relating to two things mainly:
- Goethe CEFR and
- Exploring word families
So… let’s go!
What is my Dictionary
Quick primer if you don’t know what my dictionary is, at all.
It’s a German-English dictionary which I have been building since 2020. Yes, Covid. It has almost 13.000 entries right now (and growing) and what special is that they’re ALL HANDMADE by me.
I have picked the translations, I have grouped translations into underlying themes, and often, I have added some note or comment to each use that’s relevant for you, particularly if you’re a native speaker of English.
You also get the opposite, and the usefulness of each idea, and I also have many handmade examples, and the entries do point you to articles the word is discussed in. Oh and for about 80% of the words, you can explore family relations easily.
And just to make sure… all this is WITHOUT AI. So no hallucinations or generic info. And it’s also not scraped from other dictionaries.
It’s really hand-crafted. An artisanal dictionary if you will. Like a fine sourdough dictionary, aged in an oak barrel.
But it’s not in its final form yet, and this week, I have made some really cool additions.
Level and Frequency of words
I am currently adding a reference to the Goethe CEFR lists to words. So a word that is on the A1 list, will get a Goethe A1 badge.
Personally, I do not like the Goethe lists. I think they’re full of weird words and are lacking others and they’re definitely NOT a simple “These are the best words for beginners”-list.
I’ll probably draw up my own little beginner set soon and also add tags to the dictionary, but Goethe is so widely know that I feel it’s relevant information for you to have.
And while I’m doing it, I can also close gaps in my dictionary, so I’m adding all those words that Goethe has that aren’t yet in there. Well… except some very few that are just too stupid.
Anyway, here’s how it looks:
Number 1 is the Goethe badge and number 3 are the important verb forms, to which I recently added the info about vowel shift for third person (like here gibt).
Now, what about number 2 though? The #8?
Well, that’s another metric I’ve added. The number shows the rank on the top 1000 verb list which is based on an actual dataset that’s a mix of spoken and written language.
I have this for verbs (about the top 1100), nouns (top 1750) and adjectives (top 530 or so) and the info is in there NOW, though a few entries are still missing.
I do think that showing the exact rank is a bit of an overkill though. Like… what good does it do to know that a word is #765 instead of #758.
So I’ll most likely switch that to groups like top 10, top 50, top 100, top 200 and so on.
I think that’s more valuable for you.
But yeah, this info is now life and besides my own “usefulness” indication, it can be another piece of info for you to decide whether you want to add a word to your collections.
All right. And now on to the next feature, which I think is even cooler.
Exploring German Word Family Trees
Like I said, I have organized about 80% of the words into families and I also have about 300 of the most relevant word roots (Indo-European and Germanic), many of those with descriptions and a short overview of the English side of the tree.
But so far, this info was just kind of dumped onto the page and for a big family, you’d see like 150 words in a list which wasn’t really all that compelling.
Well now, you can walk up and down the branches of the tree and see the individual children for each parent.
Here’s how it looks (I have added the blur to focus on the items, it’s not blurred on the actual site)
This is the tree you see on the entry of geben. You can see the parent branch, which is just the root here.
And you can see all the offspring that are in the dictionary. Those that are a button (1) are clickable, the number indicates how many offspring this word has. When you click, this branch will open up and you’ll see children, and if they have children themselves, you can dig deeper.
Or you can go back up.
And now the really cool part: when you click on the translation icon (2), you will see a popup with ALL the meanings in a quick view (3) AND a link to the full entry, if you want to explore my notes and see examples. And since it’s the same family, you will find the same tree there pretty much.
This option to quickly see the meanings of a relative was really missing until now and I’m super super happy it’s there now. I think it’s mega useful also to see if you can make sense of a meaning or if you need to drill down.
Cool.
So yeah, those are the two upgrades. The Goethe stuff is a work in progress but the word ranking and the family tree explorer tool are pretty much done and I’m really curious how you like it.
I think one of the best entries to test this out is the root *per because that has just such a huge and sprawling tree that can be fascinating to explore.
So I’ll link that up right here and I’m really really curious how you like it.
Let me know in the comments please, either here or there. Though here’s probably better :).
The Root *per and its Family – YDG Dictionary
Anyway, I can’t wait to read your feedback and also ideas what to improve or add next.
I hope you like it, have a great weekend and see you very soon.
Oh, and if you’re thinking about becoming a member… do it now. Price will go up when I’m done with flashcards, so you can lock in a great deal now and benifit from what’s in the pipeline.
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I’m excited about the Goethe rankings. I understand for a native they sometimes seem weird, but for me if i say B1 what I get is something I understand maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of, which is right where I need to be. Sure I’m probably learning a few words I could put off until later or not learning a few words I should be, but it gets me into roughly the right place.
You really should charge more for membership, but I appreciate you keep your fees so low. I really need to sit down and play with all your learning tools. The couple I experimented with were great.
Thanks for joining as a sponsor :). I just saw that. Much appreciated!
My pleasure.
I have been using this dictionary as my go-to German-English dictionary for a few months now, and I have found it immensely helpful already. The curation and the notes on usage are, frankly, incredible. I’m very excited that it now has even more amazing features!
This looks great! I’ve been building something similar with my own “encountered” German vocab spreadsheet, with a column for whether it’s in the Goethe B1 wordlist (my current target) which i can filter on for flashcard creation. I think the exercise of manually creating the list is quite good for my learning; but a list where someone with much more expertise has already done the hard work is a big temptation!
I have also added a column with the Duden “Häufigkeit” number, so that I can see flashcards for words which are in frequent use even if not in Goethe list. Since the Duden number is only on the written corpus, I’m not sure how reliable it is, and your version sounds much better. However their simple 1-5 score system is quite clear and compact, maybe worth considering as an alternative to “top 100”, “top 1000”, etc.?
I do add a manual score, but it’s per idea not per word. It’s the value dots you see under the translation.
5 means ‘must have’
4 means ‘daily life’
3 means ‘normal’
2 means ‘rare’
1 means borderline useless
Especially category 3 is the most vague and sometimes I score a word with three not because it’s useful on its own but because knowing it unlocks a bunch of other more useful words.
But it’s hand graded with a focus on normal spoken German.
I built my entire dictionary around ideas instead of word.
A word may have two translations covering two completely different ideas. One is super common, the other one is rare.
My system reflects that and gives you the option to decide which ideas of a word you wwant to learn and which ones to ignore.
So the “top x” is on word level and then the actual value of knowing the word is a separate metric and lives on the idea level.
Oh thank you, that makes sense now! Was slightly confused by “value of this meaning”…
This is great! It’s top of the line for any dictionary, and an example of that which sets this site apart from any that I’ve seen or used. And, I just noticed the pronunciation button for words!
Yeah, I added pronunciation for almost all the words. Not my voice (I can’t do this by hand) but AI sounds good enough and it’s better than not having it :)
This is such a great added feature! Esp helpful for separable verbs! Thanks!!
It’ll get even better. Already working on the next upgrade.
Many thanks, Emanuel.
You really are “the world’s best teacher of German words and grammar”!
What a mammoth effort . I’m so glad that I joined as a life member
Happy that you’re zufrieden :).
(yes, 2nd comment…)
Searched for Anfangen. It showed #88 (see my earlier comment if you haven’t already). Specifically, the entry said #88 of “a verbs”. Cool. So I clicked on the an verbs link right next to it. It took me to a page that listed a whole bunch of an verbs, except the list stops abruptly (nothing after abd… alphabetically), and more to the point, anfangen isn’t on the list. So it knows anfangen is an “an verb” but the list of a verbs it references doesn’t contain it.
That list you see there is the list of “an verbs” in alphabetical order. The auto load is broken at the moment, so it stops at 200 entries, I think.
That’s basically a word type list, but I’ll add a frequency list too at some point.
Toll! Danke dafür. Ich habe kein problem damit #786 oder #765 zu sehen. Ehrlich, finde ich das ein bisschen interessant. Wenn jemand diese Nummer sieht, kann er selbst sich entschieden wie wichtig die ist. Ja, #786 oder #765 ist irrelevant, aber #5 oder #49 vielleicht nicht (beide top 50). Das könnte mir wichtig sein.
Danke nochmals.
Ja, das stimmt.
ich dachte, das ich “meaningful” Intervalle mache.
Also Top 10, Top 20, Top 50, Top 100, Top 200 etc.
Wenn etwa Top 10 ist, dann kriegt es natuerlich nur die Top 10 Marke und nicht alle. Top 100 heisst also im Prinzip “top 51-100”.
Was denkst du darueber? Ich kann’s natuerlich auch einfach so lassen, aber dann muss man ja auch wissen, was die Methodik war, und das ganze Ranking ist auf jeden Fall auch durch Textkorpus gepraegt und ist nicht immer repraesentativ fuer gesprochene Sprache.
Ich schlage vor, alle relevanten Tags anzugeben. Wenn ich nach den “Top 100” suche, ich erwarte, eine Liste mit 100 Einträgen. Wenn die Liste nur 50 hat, wäre ich verwirrt. Um alle 100 zu bekommen, müsste ich dann separat die “Top 100” + “Top 50” + “Top 20” + “Top 10” + “Top 5” aussuchen…
Wenn du nach top 100 filterst, kriegst du natuerlich Platz 1 bis hundert :). Es geht nur um die “badge”.
Es ist mir interessant die bestimmte Nummer zu sehen. Vielleicht in searches kann man top-X suchen – das ergibt sinn. Aber egal ehrlich. Bin nur glücklich das alles funktioniert.
This is incredible. I am beyond impressed with the trees.
Sweet, happy to hear that :)
I love this – both the new formatting and details in the dictionary and the tree. I agree that general categories for word frequency would be more helpful than specific numbers. Can connect words to multiple branches? Like I notice that fernsehen is connected to sehen but not fern.
Hallo,
Some typos first:
“It’s German-English dictionary” (It’s a German-English dictionary)
sourdough is just one word
“But it’s wasn’t in its final form yet” (But it wasn’t in its final form yet)
Thanks, the tree is brilliant :))))
Bis bald!
So glad you do what you do. I do not know of anything else like it.
Props, Emmanuel, for the number of features and upgrades you’re able to churn out in short timeframes–while ensuring quality. It’s impressive and appreciated.
am excited for this! Thanks for not turning the dictionary into an ai-slopfest!
Amen!
AI is notoriously unreliable.
Das finde ich wunderbar für stöbern. Kleine Frage: Wird es möglich sein, nach Rang other Goethe-Niveau zu filtrieren oder sortieren?
Ja klar, das mache ich auf jeden Fall dann dazu, wenn alles fertig eingetragen ist :)
Nehmen: to take
ABnehmen – to take off, lose weight
ANnehmen.- to accept
(sich) BEnehmen – to behave (oneself)
VERnehmen – to take minutes
VORnehmen – to undertake, to begin
ZUnehmen – to gain weight
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Hi Harald – “take minutes” seems like a misleading translation for vernehmen. It doesn’t communicate any of the legal / law enforcement context the word is generally used in – cross examine / interrogate / question / take a statement can be closer depending the context (who /how). It also doesn’t take the secondary less common meaning (to hear) into account.
Good point there, xv.
I was merely drawing upon the term “Das Protokoll vernehmen”, that’s all.
yeah, I knew taking minutes a sort of “protokollieren”. In work meetings, the person taking minutes would “das Protokell machen” or more simply “mitschreiben”.
Thank you for that clarification, Emanuel.