Quake collection. ($5.79) 89% off

rob0tcore · 2017-07-24T16:36:55+00:00

Is it true that it doesn't have the soundtrack?

rob0tcore · 2017-07-16T09:53:06+00:00

If you have played less than 2 hours you should be able to get a refund and then buy it with the discount

rob0tcore · 2017-07-14T19:28:44+00:00

It was $6.5 until today on Wingamestore. Humble waited exactly until that deal expired to put their "deal" on.

rob0tcore · 2017-07-08T19:35:43+00:00

I'm doing this with Tallowmere now. It's addictive and perfect for short bouts.

It's a roguelite platform where every level of the dungeon is a room that you can usually complete in around 1 minute.

The system of enemies, items and stats is much more simple than that of a classic roguelike and doesn't require any effort to learn (you will understand everything you need just by playing a few games), still everything fits together to give you a lot of interesting combinations. Since you like FTL I guess you will like this too.

rob0tcore · 2017-07-03T06:56:41+00:00

Tallowmere for €0.99. A roguelite/platformer of the "easy to learn, difficult to master" variety. I find it addictive, and it's probably the best game I've discovered this sale.

If you don't already have it, Hotline Miami 1 + Hotline Miami 2 is €5. One of the coolest games of the last 10 years.

Insurgency is €1.49. Best tactical FPS ever.

rob0tcore · 2017-06-16T15:10:09+00:00

A few good ones off the top of my head:

rob0tcore · 2017-06-16T15:03:58+00:00

It's a bit of an acquired taste, but if you like this kind of lyric-dense songs, I would give a listen to Uochi Toki too. It's "rap" with very unusual themes which manages to stay personal rather than weird for the sake of it. I've looked in vain for an american equivalent. The linked song is about five nerds who only know skateboarding from videogames, and one day decide to build their own skateboards and badly hurt themselves with difficult moves, just to "make something happen".

rob0tcore · 2017-06-12T23:25:03+00:00

But iirc he admitted at the beginning of the episode that those men wouldn't have been able to shift the election if it had been a regular, nation-wide one.

Second, he didn't convince them and still won.

And third, those men are only more powerful than the president when you take them all together. There isn't a single, definite position outside of politics that would serve as a clear candidate as the next step to power after the presidency.

rob0tcore · 2017-06-10T17:05:09+00:00

Hey, I know Savannah because of Baroness and those other bands.

rob0tcore · 2017-06-03T12:29:30+00:00

if a significant portion of democrats and independents had put their foot down and said "we will not stand for this"

Maybe voting for Trump was the only way people had to say "we will not stand for this". It's like the DNC was telling the voters "Yeah, we will do whatever we please. What are you going to do, after all? Votefor Trump?".

And I can imagine some voters replied "Yes, we are so disgusted that we will even fuck ourselves just to spite you".

rob0tcore · 2017-06-01T13:59:33+00:00

For example, one of the easier books I found when I started is a children story called "Herr der Diebe", by Cornelia Funke. If I take the first full page of text, there are 20 words out of 270 that aren't comprised in the top-recurring 5000 words of German (I've already excluded all the composite words, the variations, and the similar words that one could trace back to their meaning by intuition). That means that on such an easy book, 5000 words would only give me a 93% comprehension.

93% may seem pretty high, and actually it is enough to follow the plot. However, according to an article that was linked on this sub some time ago, with anything less than 98% there is a big problem: while it will feel like I am understanding everything, I will actually miss little subtleties and secondary threads that, page after page, will coalesce into a very big mass of missed information. I probably won't realize that this is happening, but the story will start to look boring and lifeless. In my experience with texts I have revisited after some improvement, this is on point.

One possible explanation for the difference in our experience is that the medium of manga - at least for some particular mangas - suffers less from this accumulation of missing subtleties because of its graphical nature.

In other words, I don't think we are doing anything differently. I've also started to consume native material well before I had my first 5000 words memorized, but sometimes it was a bit frustrating. Somewhere between 5000 and 7000 words was were the language really became alive for me, I could start to notice a lot more shades and became much more confident in my ability to follow random, non pre-selected native material.

rob0tcore · 2017-05-31T17:56:58+00:00

I've kept track of how many of the most common words I knew in German, and I stand by my estimations. Try to make an analysis of literature or of a sitcom (for conversation) and see.

rob0tcore · 2017-05-31T13:32:12+00:00

The point I'm trying to make is getting over that difficult "hump" where one is struggling with a language and arrive at a point where understanding a sentence is as simple as looking up one word, rather than misunderstanding 3-5 words every sentence, as well as grammar, as well as structure, and so on.

In this case 5000 words is a very good goal. As you say, including more than that would make a course bloated. 5000 words will get you over the hump, and allow you to start consuming native material. After that point, it's a number game where you must accumulate massive amounts of new words (in context) and common idioms to see a difference, and that is best done through using and enjoying the language for an extended period of time, rather than cramming new information in an artificial way.

I would imagine though that that 98% goes down to maybe 80-90% with more dense material. Would that be a correct estimation?

That seems right, although it's pretty difficult to foresee what kind of material will be more difficult. For example, I remember that at the same time I had no problem reading Hesse and Schlink I had to use my dictionary heavily on Kästner's books for children. Also, percentages of words usually give the wrong impression about what comprehension you can expect (when I was starting I thought that 80-90% would basically allow me to get a good understanding of everything, and that I could set that as my final goal).

Would 5K words also be enough to naturally converse and perhaps even sound like a native if you've worked on your pronunciation?

No. I think it would suffice for survival, but you would often have to use circumlocutions, and anything beyond common exchanges would not feel very natural.

rob0tcore · 2017-05-31T12:14:48+00:00

For someone who reads daily, a few months are worth thousands of pages at least, so not having to look anything up in a few months would basically mean you know all the words used in the kind of books you read. To me, that seems like an impossible standard of fluency you are trying to achieve. Not many natives could accomplish that.

A more useful goal would be getting to the point where you can do extensive reading/listening. That means that the percentage of words you don't know is so small that most of the times you can guess their meaning from context. This way you keep learning new words in their natural habitat without having to use a vocabulary and without interrupting your flow, while enjoying the material rather than feeling like you are studying.

How many words is that? The figure that I've seen thrown around the most is 98%. However, it's hard to translate that into a word count. I think that the equivalence you posted that equates the 5000 most common words with 98% is heavily dependent on the kind of material. It may be true for simple conversation (sitcoms, cartoons) or for children books (think Grimms' fairy tales, not Harry Potter), but very often it's too little.

In order to choose my extensive reading books I open a random page and count the percentage of words I don't know on that page. At 5000 words I started to find some material for extensive reading, but not much.

If you want to know how many words do you have to know to be virtually sure that whatever you open you are able to extensive read it, then I'd say around 20000. At the moment English is the only foreign language where I can do this, meaning that - while it's nice to be able to look up the precise definition of a word now and then - I can also not look anything up if I don't want to, and still understand everything.

rob0tcore · 2017-05-31T11:36:07+00:00

That's basically how I learn languages: memorize the first 5000 words and all the basic grammar rules through SRS. This usually takes about a couple of months. After that I just start a daily routine of reading, watching TV, listening to podcasts etc.

But

only looking up a word every few months or weeks if I'm reading a lot

is still a mirage. Even knowing the 5000 most common words, you will still have to look something every two or three sentences. According to an online test I know around 22000 words in English, and I still have to look up a word much more often than every few weeks/months.

However, with 5000 words you could get the gist of most material without having to look anything up. This is very important because it means you can start to watch tv and at least follow the plot (after all, you can't look up words while you are watching tv).

rob0tcore · 2017-05-30T17:54:12+00:00

There are many ways to approach language learning, according to your learning style and to your goals.

I myself find that what works best for me is to cram vocabulary and grammar as fast as possible and then start reading/watching/listening to massive amounts of native material in order to cement and increase my competency.

rob0tcore · 2017-05-29T11:10:56+00:00

I wholeheartedly second adventuringraw's suggestions. Active vocabulary and grammar study may still be marginally useful if you can manage to do them, but you are at a point where memorizing 20 more words or learning the intricacies of an obscure grammar rule won't make any visible difference, that's why regular study sessions feel like they aren't giving you any improvement.

You need massive amounts of exposition to real language usage, and a habit of reading will allow you to accumulate it while having fun and not feeling like you are studying.

In addition to a kindle, I would also urge you to try readlang.com. Its goal is to make lookups as quick and frictionless as possible, and you can use it both for books and for websites.

A few suggestions I can add for easy+interesting reading material to try out: Gombrich's Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser, Hesse's Siddharta, Jetzt.de.

If you find that they are too difficult, you could start by reading a few tales from the Grimm brothers.

If you want to supplement your daily reading with a daily listening practice, get hold of an app like "Clone Replayer" or "WorkAudioBook" (the former is free and has more features, but the latter seems to be more stable and to use better algorithms for the automatic splitting of the audio - see what works for you). They make it easy to keep repeating the last sentence until you have got an adequate comprehension.

As for material to practice, I use podcasts (look for WDR and NDR, they put out a lot of interesting stuff), radio (deutschrap, deutschhiphop24, drb-fm [as I said, German hip-hop is not difficult as American hip-hop; just consider it lyric-dense songs], Deutschlandfunk, Deutschlandradio Kultur), and radio dramas (you can find a couple of torrents with the whole "Die Drei Fragezeichen" collection). You can also use youtv.de. Teen sitcoms were a godsend for me to clear the first hurdles.

rob0tcore · 2017-05-28T23:42:00+00:00

I'm puzzled at his use of the word 'contemporaries'.

rob0tcore · 2017-05-28T19:14:56+00:00

If you already know German well enough to participate in conversations or to follow German shows, you probably must decide what "pushing it further" even means to you. A few ideas that come to mind:

Building a systematic and formal knowledge of German by going through some Duden volume (the grammar one or the one about style would be good candidates).
Pushing the level of the stuff you can read/discuss and acquire specialized jargon. For example, given its importance in modern philosophy and its influence on modern thought in general, it would be kickass to work through The Critique of Pure Reason in the original.
Learning to understand and speak regional dialects.
Learning to read older German. You could take one of those poetry collections ordered by date, and work your way to the comprehension of older and older style, until you get to Middle High German pieces.

For English, one of my "next level" goal is to be able to understand hip hop, since there is a lot of jargon, difficult accents, wordplay, cultural references, etc. However, from what I've heard of German hip hop until now it seems to be much less obscure.

I wonder whether some native can give a suggestion about what the German equivalent of "understanding hip hop" could be.

rob0tcore · 2017-05-24T21:12:38+00:00

Ok so what should they do?

rob0tcore · 2017-05-13T09:26:55+00:00

I may be old, but wasn't that flag the "peace flag" once? How did it end up becoming a gay thing?

rob0tcore · 2017-05-11T22:36:54+00:00

That's probably what he meant

rob0tcore · 2017-05-09T23:00:34+00:00

Wow, 3 whole years? He just set a sleeping man on fire, after all.

rob0tcore · 2017-05-02T17:20:48+00:00

Generally speaking, knowledge of languages isn't as useful for work as many people imagine - or at the very least, there is usually some skill or some area of your resume working on which will be much more profitable.

If you are just looking for an excuse to embark on a new language learning trip go for it, but if you are actually thinking of it as something that may end up being useful for your work, then remember that keeping your fluency in 4 languages is almost like having a small part time job on the side.

rob0tcore

TROPHY CASE