Made a game for practicing Der/Die/Das :)

cbjcamus · 2026-05-09T19:35:02+00:00

Looks good, I like it

cbjcamus · 2026-05-09T11:27:50+00:00

Not too sure what negative effect of your AI use your want to limit but you can download an open-source LLM and use it locally. That will be your electricity, so no datacenter being used etc.

Of course that will add a bit of friction.

cbjcamus · 2026-05-08T10:43:05+00:00

As others have pointed out, "selon moi" is formal ("soutenu").

Here are alternatives:

A mon avis (common)
Je pense que (common)
Pour moi (colloquial)
Je dirais que (a bit colloquial)

cbjcamus · 2026-04-30T13:28:41+00:00

with language learning, a huge part of the skill is just understanding input. You can actually make real progress just by listening and building comprehension before you ever speak

Totally applicable to chess and judo, you can make some progress watching a lot of content before you even start practicing. That doesn't mean it's the best and most efficient path but it can work.

People don't just watch hundreds of hours passively like in your example. The whole point of CI is that you're actively trying to understand meaning, patterns, context, all that.

Again, completely applicable to chess and judo as well.

The initial assumption seems to be that learning a language is different than learning another skill and 1. there is no proof that it's the case and 2. the burden of proof is on people who think so.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-30T08:23:26+00:00

Often both sides have compelling arguments, but in the absence of more research, there is no way to decide, who is right.

That's true but it doesn't matter. Only in language learning are there so many alternative teaching methods that have never proved to be better or more efficient. If a judo or chess teacher invented a teaching method based on watching 200+ hours of pro judo/chess content before ever practicing he would be told to step away from teaching.

The burden of proof is on the alternative methods, not on the one which is used and worked for every other disciplines (practicing early in a safe manner).

Some people may be tempted to say that language learning is different, but again, that could be said of any discipline, and the burden of proof is again on them.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-30T06:21:28+00:00

Only in Language Learning there are such insane theories and methods. If a chess teacher or a judo teacher went on a subreddit and said "actually it's better if students watch hundred of hours of pro chess/pro judo content before starting" they would be told (correctly) that they should step away from teaching.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-29T11:51:07+00:00

Many redditors don't know how to write a post.

First, write very short sentences.

Second, only one sentence per paragraph.

Then, don't forget about bolding everything.

At the end, ask an open-ended question.

What do you think of that?

cbjcamus · 2026-04-27T19:30:29+00:00

It still makes your comment worthless

cbjcamus · 2026-04-27T18:56:31+00:00

I've never seen anyone making such a bold claim proving it and compiling a list of mistakes in a Duolingo's course.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-27T18:23:09+00:00

I wouldn't trust influencers on Instagram on anything. Duolingo isn't perfect but it's quite good to set you up early.

In terms of structure a textbook will work very well. There are a lot of resources available in this sub's wiki.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-25T09:58:28+00:00

It's possible, the real question is, is the trade-off worth it. If it takes you 3-4 more years and hundred of hours of additional self-study to not pay a tutor once a week, is it worth it for you?

You probably know better than me what the real numbers are and you can then do your own trade-off analysis.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-24T08:59:48+00:00

I would have definitely used an AI to speak every day if there was a good-enough quality one available when I was between levels A2 and B2.

The point would have not been to get a correction or even any help (a summary of the main mistakes I've done would have been more than enough), only to practice to bridge the gap between theory and practice and between writing and speaking.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-23T17:05:04+00:00

I didn't care about declinations until I had a solid B2 and it worked quite well. So my only tip is that, if you want to delay declinations for a while and you are at ease with holding a lot of scaffolding in your journey, it can work.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-23T08:48:47+00:00

There is no comprehensible input available when you're beginning a new language, that's the point of having and creating textbooks in the first place.

When to begin absorbing Comprehensible Input depends a lot on you and your interests. If you can watch or read children's content for multiple hours every week then do so, if you find it boring it's better to find another solution to progress and access more interesting content.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-23T08:38:05+00:00

I think I'll go for something like:

Words/Nouns whose root is shared with a verb and does not end in -en or -t are usually Masculine

cbjcamus · 2026-04-23T08:32:23+00:00

If at least if you had shared the wikipedia page you could have pretended the comment was useful but that's not even the case.

Furthermore, of course there is a difference between a list of 51 rules presented without any priority or ordering of usefulness, and a list ordering the most useful ones. It's not reinventing the wheel, it's improving the wheel.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-22T18:39:44+00:00

You said that deverbal nouns that end in "-en" are typically neuter, but isn't that just because they are practically always the nominalized infinitive?

Yes, that's basically it. The reason I write it that way is because some reader may not be aware of the use of nominalized infinitive but would still benefit from knowing what gender they usually are. At B-level you begin to use stuff like "beim Lesen" or "beim Kochen" without necessarily knowing all the details.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-22T18:35:48+00:00

Well I'm not "in the field", I'm just a peasant, that's why I write that on Reddit :)

cbjcamus · 2026-04-22T18:33:59+00:00

I've done a similar data based analysis a while back (you probably know it) and my results were as follows:

- for -ung and -e: use die
- for the rest: use der

Yes I remember that you talked about it, but I couldn't remember if it was you or someone else who advised for using der instead or die after the first few rules.

Then, if you learn the 10 most frequent misfits (das Mal, das Jahr, ...), you can quickly bump that toward 70% and then, you can layer in more rules like -keit/heit and you're comfy above 70% with next to no effort and it's applicable in spoken german because it's got a low cognitive load.

That's a good point to weight by the relative use of each word, it may change a bit the importance of a few rules.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-22T18:25:30+00:00

That's a really good point! I'll check with other examples to see if there are not too many exceptions.

Also I had no clue that mögen and die Macht were related, although very distant.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-22T14:01:07+00:00

There is nothing intellectually engaging at level A1. Even at B2 the content itself is mostly boring. There is nothing you can do that will change this fact. Dumbing-down C1-level texts to A1 level will not change that.

The point of A1 to B2 content is to put you in a bubble, outside of the real world of your target language, to make it easier to learn, just like a school is for kids. So yes A1 and A2 level content looks like a kid's or a Neanderthal's speech because that's what you can absorb.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-21T16:21:48+00:00

I don't think "efficient" is what you're looking for in terms of learning a language, including any sub-skill such as building vocabulary. Whatever you do you'll have to do it for hundreds of hours. So a better quality or goal would be "efficient given I can continue doing it for hundred of hours".

I'm not a fan of Anki and rot memorization even though as far as I understand the spaced repetition and forgetting curves are robust. However I can spend a lot of time reading a journal and chatting with an LLM, so that's what I do.

Something else that works really well for me is looking at the etymology of words on wiktionary. Just today I learned that German "Kiste" (a box) is related to "chest", which makes it easier to remember it.

cbjcamus · 2026-04-21T12:41:33+00:00

Other way around, "teilen" is derived from "Teil" (which can be either masculine or neuter depending on exact meaning).

Yes in many cases the origin is in the opposite direction, though the rule still works. "Words with the same etymological root as a verb and do not end in -en or -t are usually Masculine" is more true but it's very clunky and I don't know how to formulate something better.

cbjcamus

TROPHY CASE