***
Hello everyone,
And welcome to Magic March Madness.
Why is it Magic March?’
Well, because I have a whole bunch of cool new tools and features for you all that I’ll show you this month.
Of course, we’ll also do some German, don’t worry about that.
But today, I want to tell you about the first feature:
The New Pronunciation Trainer
Those of you who have been poking around the site a bit probably know my pronunciation trainer.
That’s a tool where you can enter a sentence in German and record yourself saying it and it gives you immediate word for word feedback on how close that was to a native speaker.
It’s using a purpose built AI by EF Languages and it works really really well, I have to say. Like… it grades me as a native speaker perfectly, between 97% and 100% score, and whenever I put on an accent, it does pick up on the words that I pronounce in a weird way.
And this was around way before ChatGPT by the way.
Anyways, so until now, you had to enter your own text there, and there was NO way for you to hear how it would sound from a native speaker.
But that changes now.
I have reworked the tool and now, it:
- generate a sentence for you
- AND gives you a native speaker audio along with it
So you can directly compare yourself to how it would normally sound.
And that’s not all.
You can also enter a word that you want the sentence to use (because they get pretty boring pretty fast).
And most importantly:
You can pick a target sound to practice!!
So if you for instance want to practice the umlaut ü specifically or the German z, the model will generate a sentence for you that uses a lot of these sounds.
And it works surprisingly well, I have to say.
Here’s how it looks in the settings:
As you can see I seleced ü as my focus sound and here’s the resulting sentence.
You can edit this, or just enter your own sentence alltogether.
And then you can just practice the usual way. So you can record several takes of yourself, listen to them and compare them to the original and each has a word for word breakdown how well you did.
So… that’s my new upgraded system. Of course it’s not perfect and it’s not the same as a native speaker who gives you feedback on pronunciation. But it’s MUCH better than the old one.
And I might actually add a more detailed breakdown of your pronunciation soon too. More to come.
You can always find it in the menu under Tool, but I’ll also leave a link below.
But stay with me for a couple of minutes please :)
First, a couple of notes:
Getting 100% is almost impossible even for me, anything above 90% is pretty good already. And of course the quality of the grading depends on your recording quality, so make sure you playback your recording to hear how it sounds.
Also, just to be sure, the AI does NOT understand what you say. It’s not a speech to text system, it’s a pronunciation grading AI. So if you deviate from the given sentence, you’ll just get a poor grade, but the AI will not recognize the new words.
And then, there have been consistent issues with this tool for some people on iOS devices. I have now made a new attempt at fixing it, but I do not have any apple devices avaible that I could test with, so please do let me know.
And then, last but not least… I have a couple of questions for you.
Flashcards – Do you use them
That’s pretty much one of the questions already :).
But I’ve actually made a super short questionaire so no need to leave a comment about that.
***
And that’s already it?
Why am I asking this? Well… let’s say I got something in the pipeline relating to that. But I’ll tell you more soon.
So yeah, try out my new improved pronunciation trainer and let me know what you think. Either here, or over there in the comments :).
I hope you enjoy it.
Have a great start into the new week, and I’ll see you very soon, probably with a little quiz :)
Bis dann!
Pronunciation Trainer – Version 2.0
Emanuel,
I have two questions about the last sentence of your introduction in German. You said, “. . . ich freue mich über euer Feedback.”
1. Why “euer” instead of “euch”?
2. Should you not say “ich freue mich AUF euch” [?] (look forward TO your feedback.”) Feedback. I dont know if it’s “auf” ÷ accusative or dative here.
1) “your (pl) feedback” – that’s euer and eure. euch is the normal pronoun “you all”
2) “auf euer Feedback” … that would work, and arguably be better. The way I wrote it is just kind of assuming the feedback is already there.
Okay, I see. Thanks.
I started using Phase6 several years ago, because it sold Vocab sets for my textbook. Because I can easily create my own lists, I kept using it. It has automatic word review (spaced repetition: 1, 3 days, 1 week, 1 month, something like that) to facilitate learning. I also use Quizlet to take advantage of existing sets made by others.
Never heard of Phase6. It’s incredible how many tools there are out there :)
My daily morning routine includes the Spielen-button in HelloTalk (Tandem app – yes, when you discard all the scammers and hook-up suggestions, there ARE good Tandems – have had my 3-4 closest since late 2018 – we even visit each other in Sweden and Deutschland).
Spielen gives you a list of topics: Frühling, Song Contest, Buchhandlung, z.B. and you get a 5 minute interactive set to learn and memorize words through pics, spelling them, hearing, associating with the correct picture and it not only gives me structure, a sense of accomplishment, if you do it for 30 days straight, you get a 1 Month VIP membership – nothing that I “want” – however it DOES activate the dopamine-levels to keep me returning for more.
“all the scammers and hook-up suggestions,”
Oh no, even on learning apps? I feel like language learning is generally one of the most genuine and authentic spaces online, but I guess nowhere is safe.
The Spielen thing sounds fun. Basically, if I get it correctly, it’s a custom made vocabulary that you then get to work with and work through using various modes. I do like the idea of that, that it’s not premade fixed thing, but something that’s different every time, and you can get infinite ones. It’s a bit like a mystery box, the way I imagine it. Some days, you know more words, some day fewer, and some days they’re really interesting, and some days less so.
Yeah, the Spielen is constantly changing.
You have to spell it yourself, associate with a Foto, choose one of four Fotos to fit the word and visa versa – and the topics are also constantly changing so I rind it stimulating.
As for the scammers and people who think it’s a dating app… they are easily spotted – like I said, I’ve had most of my Tandems since nearly the beginning – some have visited me in SE, I meet up with a few in HH – one sends me fig marmelade from her fig tree every year…
Broadening the question somewhat to ‘Do you use a Spaced Repetition System’ – I’ve been using the Natulang app for about 6 months and I wish I had been using it since the start of my journey. It’s speech focused, brilliantly scripted, and has had a profound impact on my spoken German. Passive acquisition is …well passive. The developer (recently conscripted into the Ukraine army) has done a incredible job…look it up on Reddit, particularly the ‘philosophy’ underlying it’s implementation. There’s also a Flash Card element in it.
Love the updated pronunciation functionality Emmanuel!!! Ya gotta be able to speak the language after all, not just sit at a screen reading in silence!
I used Babbel’s flash cards when I was a member. Old fashioned 3×5 cards and a pen to create my own. I have hundreds of those going back many years.
Hi everyone at the YourDailyGerman community, I just got a one year membership to the sponsored membership by the members of this community.
Thank you so much to everyone who contributed and made this possible. I’m currently learning German at the B1 level and this support really means a lot to me. I truly appreciate the kindness of this community and I’m excited to keep learning!
I use Remnote for flashcards, but when I come across words I don’t know, I typically just write them down in a notebook with a definition and example sentence. I only occasionally turn them into flashcards, otherwise I just get too many flashcards to keep up with.
I use Clozemaster daily (for Ukrainian) … learned about it from the comments to another article here! It keeps track of your vocabulary … has the advantage of putting the words in sentences rather than than isolated like simple flash cards / apps.
Curious as to how effective Clozemaster is for Ukrainian.
I’m a slow learner, so it’s hard to say, but it’s definitely helping to build my vocabulary, and the built in dictionary lookup of all words in the cloze (not just the target word) and AI explanations are usually helpful, (but not always)
For a dedicated flashcard App I use DuoCards.
Oh, I have that one as well. Pretty nice, but too expensive for premium for what they offer.
Regarding flashcard use: when I’m doing a focused German course (my employer offers course to employees, they are 3 to 6 months long, and then I take a break), I use Anki really heavily. However, between courses, I pretty much never start it up, unfortunately. Therefore, I voted with “Yes, but not that often”.
I used to use the app (and website) of cram.com. And there was Brainscape, too; that was not my choice, but rather a requirement (I think that one came from Anja Winters and the now-defunct 3plus1germanacademy).
Ich habe KDE Parley (https://apps.kde.org/parley/) benutzen, aber nicht öftnet oder zuletzt. (recently?)
One for the open source folks. It apparently also uses spaced repetition, though I did not know that term until this discussion. It concentrates most on the words you miss most often, but keeps throwing in those learned previously for retention. I think it works pretty well.
PS – some time ago I managed to use another open source tool to get my keyboard to be able to type all those pesky characters (ẞßÄäÖöÜü) mostly conveniently (first use for an actual purpose above :) ). Have you considered doing a lesson on when to use scharfes s? Although I’ve read various descriptions online it is still a mystery to me.
Babbel
I think the second questionnaire can be multiple choice, anyway… that sounds cool!!
And thank you everyone who helped me to get a membership and thank you Emanuel for amazing content ( ੭ ･ᴗ･ )੭
Viel Spaß!
Oh, you’re totally right, many people do use more than one tool. I’ll change that. Thanks and welcome
Hi Emanuel and everyone,
I am sincerely grateful for being sponsored as a member of YourDailyGerman for 6 months. I first gained invaluable insights from this blog back in 2015–2016 when it was free and was named “german is easy” and it helped me navigate the myriad nuances of the German language. I am immensely happy that I am granted the sponsored membership within a day of application as brokie.:-)
I hope to pay it forward in a few months so that other members who are financially constrained can enjoy the same opportunity I did.
Lg
Welcome back :).
The site really has grown a LOT since back in the day.
I joined as a Life Time member but am not getting the articles in my E-mail feed. I couldn’t find your email address to contact you privately…I miss receiving them! Please help.
I replied to you via email.
“So if you for instance want to practice the umlaut ü” you know my Aussprache kryptonite! Ahem I’ll work on that.
For the flashcards, I didn’t use them at first and then when I tried to start, the decks or programs I found all had like 1000 words I already knew that I had to sort through first. So what I did instead is started adding every word I had to look up to my Anki deck and now I have 700 words that I actually (didn’t) know but have run into in my daily life reading news, doing crosswords, and reading fantasy novels. Like Weiher and Talg and Sturmhaube.
Ich benutze eine App heiß(xx) Flashcard Hero
Es kann einen Satz auf Deutsche oder English geben – und die Stimmen auf D und E sind beides sehr gut.
“ich benutze eine App Namens Flahscard Hero”
“heißen” kannst du nicht wie “called X” verwendenn. “genannt” würde gehen, aber das ist weniger idiomatisch.
Auch “namens”, z.B “Ein Brettspiel NAMENS ‘Mensch, aergere dich nicht!’ d.h. A board game called/named….
Ich nutze Lingvist wegen seiner Methode der verteilten Wiederholung.
I teach German and take classes in ancient languages (the deader the better is our motto). I am a big fan of the flash cards using the Leitner box method. My instructors pushed it on me and I push it on my students.
(the deader the better is our motto)
Lol, that’s awesome!!
What’s the deadest one you’ve looked into?
As for Leitner box… that’s bascially analogue spaced repetition, right?
I think this is great. I used to do a rough version of this with my Italian cards. I had a stack of 100 or so, and I would put the cards into different sections depending on how well I felt I knew it. Works amazingly well and doesn’t need any clicking :)
Annette, do you teach at a high school or at a university? Just wondering.
I teach German at a college.
Some of my students swear by Duolingo.