können

Word type: verb
Based on: *gno-

Perfect (spoken past): hat gekonnt

Preterite (written past): konnte

Meanings

1.

can, to be able to

(Colloquially also used in the sense of being allowed to)

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Examples

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German Irregular Verbs - (haben, sein, modal verbs)

Let's get to know the German modal verbs (and one of their verb friends). We'll learn what they mean and how to conjugate them. With lots of audio examples.

Word Family

Root: *gno-

The core idea of this root was

knowing

It’s the origin of can and to know and a big branch of Latin and Greek words that are all about knowledge in some way.
Here’s a little (incomplete) overview:

can, could (“knowledge, skill”)
to know, knowledge, acknowledge (“to know”)
cognition (“get to know”)
agnostic (“not knowing”)
ignore, ignorant (“not knowing”)
incognito (“unknown”)
connoisseur (“the knower”)
diagnose (“know about someone else”)
recognize (“know again”)
physiognomy (“knowledge of the physique”)
notice, notify
noble (“the known ones”)

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With the pronunciation tool, you can check how well you pronounce a word or sentence. It uses an AI system that is being developed by EF languages for that purpose. The AI takes your input, and compares it to how a native speaker would sound. Then, it gives you feedback for each word and the sentence as a whole.

How does it work?

You put in a word or sentence or load and example from the site. Then you hit record to start and again to stop. You'll then get feedback on how you did, for each individual word and in total. The AI grades sound, emphasis and rhythm. The recording is limited to 20 seconds and will stop automatically.

How do I know what to improve if I got a low score

That's beyond what an automatic system like this can do. It's not a tool to perfect your pronunciation. It's more about giving you a rough estimate and giving you the option to actually speak. But to really iron out mistakes, you need feedback from a native speaker.

My results vary a lot

Quite a bit depends on the quality of your microphone. If there's a lot of noise around you, the AI will struggle with that. Also, the AI does better with sentences. For short words, it's not as good. Lastly, the AI is still being developed and struggles with some important words.

The recording is not working

The recording button should change color and pulsate while recording. If nothing happens, the most likely problem is that your browser is blocking the microphone. You can allow mic access by clicking on the icon left of the address in the address bar (on most browsers).

What do the colors mean

red: not very good (<20% match) yellow: okay (<50% match)

light green: good (<80% match)

green: amazing (80-99% match)

green+outline: perfect (100%)

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