der Schwachmat

Word type: noun
Based on: schwach
Plural: die Schwachmaten

Meanings

1.

the weak mind, dimwit

(in a sense of idiot)

How useful:

Examples

You need to be a member to see the examples.

My Articles

Advent Calendar 23 - "50 Shades of Dumb"

Vocab:

der Trottel, der Schwachmat, der Honk, der Depp

Word Family

Root: *su̯enk-

The core idea of this root was:

bending, swaying, swinging

It’s still quite visible in German words like schwanken and schwenken and even in Schwanz (tail). Just think of a dog waving it :).
The adjective schwach started out as bendable, from where it is not far to its current meaning weak.

The English etymological sources I am using do not mention this root.
But according to the German sources, it would be the origin of the English words to swing, to sway and possibly also swag.

0 0 votes

Article Rating

abschwächen Schwäche schwächen Schwachmat

Aufschwung Schwung

Questions and Comments

🗨

Subscribe

0 Comments

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

Train Your Pronunciation

x

?

close info

What is this?

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%)

Difficulty (only for AI exercises):