Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories(webbu.app)
webbu.app
Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories
https://webbu.app/german
123 comments
Native German speaker here. My partner is a native English speaker and I was about to recommend this to her.
However, it looks like a lot of this is auto generated/translated, making it sound unnatural or sometimes just wrong.
For example:
I looked at this example story [1] and the practice question is slightly bad grammar. It should be "Wer ging im Wald spazieren?", not "Wer ging spazieren im Wald?".
Or: "Sie lachten und hatten eine gute Zeit [...]" --> This seems like a bad translation of "had a good time", which doesn't translate directly to German like this.
Would definitely not recommend this overall.
[1] https://webbu.app/l/german/story/ein-unerwarteter-spaziergan...
However, it looks like a lot of this is auto generated/translated, making it sound unnatural or sometimes just wrong.
For example:
I looked at this example story [1] and the practice question is slightly bad grammar. It should be "Wer ging im Wald spazieren?", not "Wer ging spazieren im Wald?".
Or: "Sie lachten und hatten eine gute Zeit [...]" --> This seems like a bad translation of "had a good time", which doesn't translate directly to German like this.
Would definitely not recommend this overall.
[1] https://webbu.app/l/german/story/ein-unerwarteter-spaziergan...
Seems silly to translate short stories into German, rather than just using German short stories. Even if translation got incredibly good, the "real" German stories would have the extra benefit of teaching you about the culture.
On that note, do you have a recommendation for a collection of actual German short stories?
On that note, do you have a recommendation for a collection of actual German short stories?
Not exactly stories in text, but there is a YouTube channel called “Deutsch Lernen Durch Hören”[1] (“Learning German Through Listening”), which has hundreds of stories for all levels.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/@DldH
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/@DldH
not a collection, but Heinrich Böll, An der Brücke, is one of my favourite shorts in any language.
Der Struwwelpeter
Excellent recommendation. I always use that book to explain to people how I grew up very differently from folks in the US (where I now live).
English: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24571
German: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24571/24571-h/24571-h.htm
English: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24571
German: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24571/24571-h/24571-h.htm
My sarcasm detector is failing me. Mid 19th century Germany (around the time the Struwwelpeter was written, that would have been the Deutscher Bund, when nationalism was seen as progressive) is culturally, sociologically more different from late 20th century Germany then late 20th century Germany from late 20th century USA methinks.
German parenting is very different from American parenting. Struwwelpeter is an extreme, but it does capture the essence of the tough love approach, emphasis on following rules (or suffer the consequences) etc
Certain elements of German culture did not just develop in the last 150-200 years :)
Certain elements of German culture did not just develop in the last 150-200 years :)
Extreme? I read it when I was 6 or 7, and was amused by it. I have a number of books that are inappropriate for children, but Struwwelpeter isn't one of them.
Exaggerated might be a better word. It is stories meant to educate kids on proper behavior. The consequences shown in Struwwelpeter are just empty threats parents make - but depicted in that book.
I also read it at age 6 or so.
Many American parents would find it inappropriate for kids given how graphic and negative it is. I think it is a classic however.
I also read it at age 6 or so.
Many American parents would find it inappropriate for kids given how graphic and negative it is. I think it is a classic however.
I'd call cutting a child's thumbs off as a punishment for sucking on them pretty extreme. Or being burnt alive for playing with matches. And yes, I'm German.
Hardly worse than Hansel and Gretel being popped in the oven.
The burnt alive story was not about punishment. It was about what could happen if you play with matches. Fire doesn't care how old you are.
As for the tailor, even I at 6 or 7 knew that wasn't going to happen. I didn't know any kids who were missing thumbs!
The burnt alive story was not about punishment. It was about what could happen if you play with matches. Fire doesn't care how old you are.
As for the tailor, even I at 6 or 7 knew that wasn't going to happen. I didn't know any kids who were missing thumbs!
[deleted]
I started watching German television on YouTube a couple years ago and had a very eerie feeling when I discovered the ZDF Heute Show and Harald Schmidt's show (modeled after the Daily Show and David Letterman, respectively). It might seem trite to point out a couple of television shows, but it was certainly a surprise to me. Do you think the similarity owes more to US involvement in post-war reconstruction or general globalization?
One of the things I like about the Heute Show is that the gags often point at some cultural thing I knew nothing about (in fact, I think it was one of those gags that led me to reading Stuwwelpeter in the first place). Similarly, I encountered something last week that prompted me to read Max und Moritz. So I assume these things still have cultural relevance, even if as a sort of short-hand, but I certainly see your point (edit: at least superficially).
One of the things I like about the Heute Show is that the gags often point at some cultural thing I knew nothing about (in fact, I think it was one of those gags that led me to reading Stuwwelpeter in the first place). Similarly, I encountered something last week that prompted me to read Max und Moritz. So I assume these things still have cultural relevance, even if as a sort of short-hand, but I certainly see your point (edit: at least superficially).
Lots of US TV gets adapted for other markets. Check out how many US-original game shows have Chinese versions, for instance. Lots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_game_sho...
Sitcoms also get adapted pretty often. Talk and panel shows, sometimes.
We do the same thing in the US, just a bit less because we've got a really, really big domestic entertainment industry, so something's got to seem just right (in terms of "will this make money?") to get picked up, shouldering its way past all the US-original shows trying to get made, but it does happen. The Office, Power Rangers (half import, half adaptation), Iron Chef, Ninja Warrior (also has a German version!) and a bunch of others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_game_sho...
Sitcoms also get adapted pretty often. Talk and panel shows, sometimes.
We do the same thing in the US, just a bit less because we've got a really, really big domestic entertainment industry, so something's got to seem just right (in terms of "will this make money?") to get picked up, shouldering its way past all the US-original shows trying to get made, but it does happen. The Office, Power Rangers (half import, half adaptation), Iron Chef, Ninja Warrior (also has a German version!) and a bunch of others.
In the aftermath of WW2, it surely was the post-war reconstruction (in what became West Germany at least). Later on, US cultural exports from Disney to Mc Donalds dominated. Hollywood, satellite t.v. and now the WWW have major influences (cue "Amerika" by Fee). Germany isn't a small US, there remain significant differences (for the better or worse), but travelling (later immigrating) from Germany to US, the latter seemed eerily familiar and strange at the same time.
I'd wager that kids in Germany today (or for the last 40 years or so) can relate more to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn than to Struwwelpeter, not the least because the former was made into a (quite well done) t.v. show dubbed and broadcast in Germany.
I'd wager that kids in Germany today (or for the last 40 years or so) can relate more to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn than to Struwwelpeter, not the least because the former was made into a (quite well done) t.v. show dubbed and broadcast in Germany.
The Struwwelpeter continues to be part of German culture.
Kafka has some collections of short stories that are great. Some are no more than a page long but impactful, so they satisfying to stumble through with bad German skills.
I once spent an afternoon on just the first sentence of Das Urteil. I had to draw syntax trees to figure it out!
I suspect these might be generated by chatgpt or similar.
I think this can be solved through asking the LLM to improve the output itself. I asked GPT-4 to "provide more idiomatic and grammatically correct versions. Consider whether each phrase sounds like German," and got the following output:
Wer ging im Wald spazieren?
Max war sehr dankbar für Lisas Hilfe und lud sie zum Eisessen ein. Sie gingen zu einer nahegelegenen Eisdiele und verbrachten den restlichen Tag zusammen. Sie lachten und hatten eine schöne Zeit, als ob sie sich schon lange gekannt hätten.
@cloogsicer: is "eine schöne Zeit" more acceptable? The rest?
Wer ging im Wald spazieren?
Max war sehr dankbar für Lisas Hilfe und lud sie zum Eisessen ein. Sie gingen zu einer nahegelegenen Eisdiele und verbrachten den restlichen Tag zusammen. Sie lachten und hatten eine schöne Zeit, als ob sie sich schon lange gekannt hätten.
@cloogsicer: is "eine schöne Zeit" more acceptable? The rest?
I tried the first paragraph, too. Seems to have made several idiomatic improvements:
Es war ein sonniger Tag im Wald und ein Mädchen namens Lisa ging spazieren. Sie hörte plötzlich ein Geräusch und drehte sich um. Sie sah einen Jungen namens Max, der in Schwierigkeiten war. Er hatte sich verlaufen und wusste nicht, wie er zurück zum Parkplatz kommen sollte. Lisa entschied sich, ihm zu helfen und sie begannen gemeinsam den Weg zurück zu suchen.
-->
Es war ein sonniger Tag im Wald, und ein Mädchen namens Lisa ging spazieren. Plötzlich hörte sie ein Geräusch und drehte sich um. Sie sah einen Jungen namens Max, der in Schwierigkeiten steckte. Er hatte sich verirrt und wusste nicht, wie er zum Parkplatz zurückkommen sollte. Lisa beschloss, ihm zu helfen, und gemeinsam suchten sie den Weg zurück.
Es war ein sonniger Tag im Wald und ein Mädchen namens Lisa ging spazieren. Sie hörte plötzlich ein Geräusch und drehte sich um. Sie sah einen Jungen namens Max, der in Schwierigkeiten war. Er hatte sich verlaufen und wusste nicht, wie er zurück zum Parkplatz kommen sollte. Lisa entschied sich, ihm zu helfen und sie begannen gemeinsam den Weg zurück zu suchen.
-->
Es war ein sonniger Tag im Wald, und ein Mädchen namens Lisa ging spazieren. Plötzlich hörte sie ein Geräusch und drehte sich um. Sie sah einen Jungen namens Max, der in Schwierigkeiten steckte. Er hatte sich verirrt und wusste nicht, wie er zum Parkplatz zurückkommen sollte. Lisa beschloss, ihm zu helfen, und gemeinsam suchten sie den Weg zurück.
I learned more from comparing these two paragraphs than from reading the original.
Little things like where the comma goes, sich verlaufen vs sich verirren.
Ich soll mehr mit le Chat auf deutsch quatschen.
Little things like where the comma goes, sich verlaufen vs sich verirren.
Ich soll mehr mit le Chat auf deutsch quatschen.
This can also be solved picking a copy of Goethe's Faust in German. It's an entertaining story.
I'd use „hatten viel Spaß zusammen“ instead of „schöne Zeit”.
Thanks for confirming my gut response, that something felt "off" about the language here. As a German learner (B1-B2ish) I had a sense something was off-key, then had a suspicion machine translation was involved when OP offered to make an Arabic version very quickly for another commenter.
My German-speaking friends can always tell when I get lazy and run a text message through DeepL instead of writing it myself in German. Please, don't ever think machine translation is a good basis for a language-learning app!
My German-speaking friends can always tell when I get lazy and run a text message through DeepL instead of writing it myself in German. Please, don't ever think machine translation is a good basis for a language-learning app!
Thanks for the feedback! I'm going to be working on improving this so hopefully It will be up to your standards very soon. I do have some ideas to check and the comments from today helped a lot. Also, I'll ask my native friends for some help.
Paired with the autogenerated questions which require upgrading to check.
One might as well use Duolingo, they have an interactive story feature which I feel does a better job than this (despite how poor I believe duolingo is for learning a language.)
One might as well use Duolingo, they have an interactive story feature which I feel does a better job than this (despite how poor I believe duolingo is for learning a language.)
TornadoGuard: https://xkcd.com/937/
Intermediate German student here. I haven’t studied German in about seven years. I found the example story surprisingly easy to understand. I wonder if that’s because it was generated by an LLM, which is mostly trained on English and is generating, basically thinly veiled English story in German.
I know I’ve seen a lot of complaints on the Latin sub Reddit about GPT generating really bad English sounding Latin.
However, for learners coming from English, this may actually be a benefit as you can get exposed to reading way faster. And ultimately reduce the time until you can read Kafka and Goethe…
Bravo!
I know I’ve seen a lot of complaints on the Latin sub Reddit about GPT generating really bad English sounding Latin.
However, for learners coming from English, this may actually be a benefit as you can get exposed to reading way faster. And ultimately reduce the time until you can read Kafka and Goethe…
Bravo!
Interesting point! I asked had a German native to go over the text but it will definitely be something I keep an eye on from now on. Thank you for checking it out!
When I was studying German twenty or so years ago I got good results from reading lots and lots of children's books, starting with the really basic stuff--like books meant for kindergarteners--and working my way up to books by Erich Kästner. By grading the material in this way you can read a lot without getting tripped up by unfamiliar words every sentence.
I've got a book called Mein Erstes Buch ("My First Book"—apologies if I screwed up the spelling, I don't have it with me at the moment to check) that starts at "see spot run" difficulty ("Ball. Red ball. Red ball and Tom. Tom bounces the red ball."—stuff like that) and, through pictures and words, by the end, has you reading at maybe a 4th grade level (whole pages of text, only occasional images).
I haven't gone through the whole thing, but I did maybe the first third of it one day, some years back, and it did work—the farther I got, the slower-going it was, but I was learning enough to keep progressing, and the way it was designed, the older parts kept getting reinforced in a kind of spaced-repetition sort of way, so at least temporarily I did have all the earlier material in my head, 100%. Very little of it stuck long term—but then again, I probably didn't spend more than ninety minutes with the book. Not enough on its own to meaningfully learn to read German, but I bet it (or something similar) could be great as part of a larger program incorporating other resources. I was really surprised at how effective it was.
I haven't gone through the whole thing, but I did maybe the first third of it one day, some years back, and it did work—the farther I got, the slower-going it was, but I was learning enough to keep progressing, and the way it was designed, the older parts kept getting reinforced in a kind of spaced-repetition sort of way, so at least temporarily I did have all the earlier material in my head, 100%. Very little of it stuck long term—but then again, I probably didn't spend more than ninety minutes with the book. Not enough on its own to meaningfully learn to read German, but I bet it (or something similar) could be great as part of a larger program incorporating other resources. I was really surprised at how effective it was.
There are several children books with that name.
Was it maybe this one: https://archive.org/details/meinerstesbuch0000unse/page/4/mo... ?
Yes, that's it!
I taught myself some German by translating Die Bruders Grimm stories word by word, writing between the lines. Combined with other learning sources it seemed to work okay.
“Die Brüder Grimm” ;)
A lot of those stories aren’t written in contemporary German and would sound very weird if you used it in your day to day language.
As someone who learned German as a second language (so take this with a pinch of salt and feel free that I did this wrong/bad), I found older German works useful for the purpose of understanding sentence structure and grammatical case. Immersion introduces vocabulary and contemporary ways of speaking. Stuff like the verb in second position was not difficult for me and asking questions by leading with a verb is actually still used frequently in English (more so in en-GB). Additionally, a number of European languages heavily use the verb “to have” in ways similar to each other, where an American English speaker may use “to be”, or “to do”, but the one thing that, to this day, I find myself struggling with occasionally is the gottverlassen grammatical case.
[deleted]
True, but they are beautiful, in my opinion, and if you're going to have to spend some time working on a text it helps if the text is something that you're willing to spend time on. Also, although the "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" use old-fashioned language, it's an old-fashioned spoken German, which means that in some ways they're closer to modern colloquial German than a lot of modern prose. They won't suit everyone but I'd definitely recommend that anyone learning German give them a try.
If you did want weird, how about learning German from the lyrics of Bach cantatas? :-)
If you did want weird, how about learning German from the lyrics of Bach cantatas? :-)
I recall "Von dem Fischer un syner Fru" being particularly weird. But there may be be editions that are translated into modern German.
so to make it plural, you just change the u to a ü?
In most cases for „der Bruder“, the answer is yes: the plural is „die Brüder“.
But in the dative (Dativ) case where the "brothers" are an indirect object, the plural form has a different spelling. The singular „den Bruder“ transforms into „den Brüdern“. For example, if you want to say "I gave it to the brothers," you can say: „Ich habe es den Brüdern gegeben“.
To figure out the plural forms, I use the online Leo dictionary (e.g. at https://dict.leo.org/german-english/bruder), which often includes a table icon for indicating when the noun endings change in other cases.
For studying plural forms of any noun, you can follow general rules for pluralization and individually memorize the plural forms of each noun with flashcards. You can also read and listen to native content to develop an intuition for what sounds right.
But in the dative (Dativ) case where the "brothers" are an indirect object, the plural form has a different spelling. The singular „den Bruder“ transforms into „den Brüdern“. For example, if you want to say "I gave it to the brothers," you can say: „Ich habe es den Brüdern gegeben“.
To figure out the plural forms, I use the online Leo dictionary (e.g. at https://dict.leo.org/german-english/bruder), which often includes a table icon for indicating when the noun endings change in other cases.
For studying plural forms of any noun, you can follow general rules for pluralization and individually memorize the plural forms of each noun with flashcards. You can also read and listen to native content to develop an intuition for what sounds right.
Yes, but there are only about 24 German nouns that form their plural just by adding two little dots like that (Umlaut). Four of them mean close relatives and are recognisable to English speakers: Vater, Mutter, Bruder, Tochter.
A while ago I came across an ancient copy of "Teach Yourself German" printed around the start of the Second World War. The very first chapter had a list of those German nouns that form their plural just with an Umlaut and instructed the reader to learn them. I bet you won't find many books published today that start like that. I like to think there are still a few people around who learnt German by reading that edition, perhaps during an air raid.
A while ago I came across an ancient copy of "Teach Yourself German" printed around the start of the Second World War. The very first chapter had a list of those German nouns that form their plural just with an Umlaut and instructed the reader to learn them. I bet you won't find many books published today that start like that. I like to think there are still a few people around who learnt German by reading that edition, perhaps during an air raid.
In this case yes. Not in every case. I don’t know if there’s a rule
If this is using LLMS then it would be great to expand to as many languages as possible because anthing outside of large languages are very poorly served by existing language learning apps. Danish (from english) would be my preference, but I imagine you could have a user configurable pair (I understand the situation is much, much more dire if you don't even presently understand a large language english,spanish,chinese etc)
Yes! I would love to expand to more languages! I am prioritizing the ones I understand otherwise it becomes really hard ha. So, yeah, I will add more languages :)
I have found ChatGPT a great tool for that sort of task (I study French).
A typical book meant for students trying to improve their reading skills usually starts from a certain level which is fairly high for me currently.
By using an LLM you can tailor-make a story i.e. define your level (“Give me a short story in French, for someone with very limited vocabulary” or “for a seven-year old”) and then adjust accordingly if it’s too easy/hard, ask to use only grammar you have studied (“only using present tense”), pick a familiar topic (“about a someone who studies Physics in college”) etc.
A typical book meant for students trying to improve their reading skills usually starts from a certain level which is fairly high for me currently.
By using an LLM you can tailor-make a story i.e. define your level (“Give me a short story in French, for someone with very limited vocabulary” or “for a seven-year old”) and then adjust accordingly if it’s too easy/hard, ask to use only grammar you have studied (“only using present tense”), pick a familiar topic (“about a someone who studies Physics in college”) etc.
Great ideas! Will see how it works :) I particularly like the idea about "only using X tense"
I think this is a really cool idea and would be something I would use. Is there some way to translate short phrases like "drehte sich um" all together rather than word by word?
That would be really helpful because taken out of context, single words translated to English will often produce very confusing results. My suggestion would be to ditch the google links and provide a properly translated version that is revealed when hovering over a word/phrase. Such a translation could be crowd sourced.
Yea, I can definitely improve that! That sounds like better way to do it. Thanks!
Or, ask an LLM to give glosses. You can tap to get a gloss in English. (Or other languages later.)
GPT-3.5 is already very good at sense disambiguation
GPT-3.5 is already very good at sense disambiguation
GPT-4 Prompt: Please assist with providing English glosses for a German text. For phrases which are not easily interpreted word-for-word, please provide a gloss for the whole phrase. Otherwise, provide a gloss for each word. You may output the glosses as a list, one gloss per line, german on left, followed by an arrow (-->), and then the english gloss.
Here's some of the output:
Es --> It
war --> was
ein --> a
sonniger --> sunny
Tag --> day
im --> in the
Wald --> forest
und --> and
ein --> a
Mädchen --> girl
namens --> named
Lisa --> Lisa
ging --> went
spazieren --> for a walk
Sie --> She
hörte --> heard
plötzlich --> suddenly
ein --> a
Geräusch --> noise
und --> and
drehte --> turned
sich --> herself
um --> around
I was expecting "drehte sich um" to be grouped together, but I'm pleased with the glosses.
Note how "sich" is glossed with "herself". That's understanding the context properly. Much more useful than a dictionary definition of "sich". Similar for "sonniger" which Google translated as "sunnier" out of context.
EDIT: Note that GPT-3.5 gave me exactly the same glosses.
Here's some of the output:
Es --> It
war --> was
ein --> a
sonniger --> sunny
Tag --> day
im --> in the
Wald --> forest
und --> and
ein --> a
Mädchen --> girl
namens --> named
Lisa --> Lisa
ging --> went
spazieren --> for a walk
Sie --> She
hörte --> heard
plötzlich --> suddenly
ein --> a
Geräusch --> noise
und --> and
drehte --> turned
sich --> herself
um --> around
I was expecting "drehte sich um" to be grouped together, but I'm pleased with the glosses.
Note how "sich" is glossed with "herself". That's understanding the context properly. Much more useful than a dictionary definition of "sich". Similar for "sonniger" which Google translated as "sunnier" out of context.
EDIT: Note that GPT-3.5 gave me exactly the same glosses.
Nice to hear that and thanks for trying it! About the translations, you are right, that would be better! I will work on that!
readlang already has that feature. Works someone different from this site, but might be what you need.
Personally I found German texts on the Kindle invaluable, with the auto dictionary lookup.
Erich Kaestner and Hans Fallada were my favourites as they used an easy/journalistic style.
Erich Kaestner and Hans Fallada were my favourites as they used an easy/journalistic style.
I learned to read German by working through "German for Reading" by Karl Sandberg. It's a great book. Work through it a couple times until the grammar is second nature, use the Anki deck "4000 German words by frequency" to increase your vocabulary, and start reading children's books (Emil und die Detektive, Max und Moritz, u.s.w) then move onto slightly harder books like Kafka's Die Verwandlung and Zweig's Schachnovelle.
Max und Moritz is hilarious btw, so don't skip it!
Max und Moritz is hilarious btw, so don't skip it!
Thanks for sharing those resources! I'll have a look
I struggled with German in middle school because it was the only foreign language available there and I wanted to hone my English instead.
Ultimately what helped me to pass were dubbed animated series like The Simpsons. Live action stuff usually had too much background noise for me to follow properly.
Ultimately what helped me to pass were dubbed animated series like The Simpsons. Live action stuff usually had too much background noise for me to follow properly.
Hopefully we can add something closer to that experience at some point too.
It‘s cute. Make sure to get some feedback from native German speakers to iron out they little mistakes or unusual word order. Also, never capitalize every first letter in a headline. Either capitalize every letter or use correct rules for which words are capitalized.
thank you!
I like the google translate powered click-to-translate, truly the best kind of low-effort functionality.
You can get even more bang for buck if you add a dropdown at the top to select the target language - you will now support learners from every country in the world in 3h of work tops =)
You can get even more bang for buck if you add a dropdown at the top to select the target language - you will now support learners from every country in the world in 3h of work tops =)
Yea hopefully I can add a few more languages soon!
Every week? you need to supply daily assignments at least. You can't learn much with just one study session per week. Maybe you can drop down to 5 days per week (weekends off), but the more you study the faster you will learn.
Ha nice idea! Perhaps I can make it configurable like you are saying!
This is off to a great start. I've been studying German through various methods for around 3 years now. Mostly as a mental exercise but also because I love German television.
For me, reading has been one of most productive ways to learn.
For me, reading has been one of most productive ways to learn.
can you recommend any German shows? thanks!!
Dark was terrific. Time travels and parallel worlds. Deutschland '83 (in particular) but also '86 and '89 were quite decent - about a young German becoming a Stasi superagent of sorts.
Oh, and while you're at it, get Das Boot if you haven't already, also available as a TV miniseries.
As for movies, you could do a lot worse than picking up a few Wim Wenders movies - say, Der Himmel über Berlin or Alice in den Städten.
Oh, if you pick up Der Himmel über Berlin, consider picking up In weiter Ferne, so nah! as well. Same universe, but more run-of-the-mill than Himmel über Berlin, which is probably the most poetically beautiful movie I have ever seen.
Oh, and while you're at it, get Das Boot if you haven't already, also available as a TV miniseries.
As for movies, you could do a lot worse than picking up a few Wim Wenders movies - say, Der Himmel über Berlin or Alice in den Städten.
Oh, if you pick up Der Himmel über Berlin, consider picking up In weiter Ferne, so nah! as well. Same universe, but more run-of-the-mill than Himmel über Berlin, which is probably the most poetically beautiful movie I have ever seen.
Nice ones! I also enjoyed some of those. Would also add to the list: biohackers, We Children from Bahnhof Zoo, barbaren, and maybe dogs of berlin.
(All non-amazon links will probably require a German IP / VPN - you may find those shows on other streaming platforms, too)
Stromberg - German adaptation of The Office, but Bernd Stromberg (aka Micheal Scott / David Brent) is a bit of an asshole this time and it's not a paper company, but an insurance company.
https://www.amazon.de/Stromberg-Staffel-2/dp/B00ERLPUNA
Tatort - mostly serious show about police solving murders, produced by all of the local public broadcasters, e.g. there are Tatorts from Cologne, Münster, Munich, each using the regional dialect. "Polizeiruf 110" is the version of the ex-GDR, it works the same way. The Münster-Tatort is quite funny:
https://www.ardmediathek.de/sammlung/tatort-folgen-mit-thiel... https://www.daserste.de/unterhaltung/krimi/tatort/index.html
Tatortreiniger - a show about a crime scene cleaner in weird situations. If you know "The Cleaner" from the BBC: This is the original show it's based upon. The main character uses a northern german / Hamburg dialect.
https://www.ardmediathek.de/serie/der-tatortreiniger/staffel...
Hubert und Staller - show about incompetent bavarian rural police solving murders, heavy focus on comedy, bavarian dialect. The first few seasons are quite funny, the later ones are meh.
https://www.daserste.de/unterhaltung/serie/hubert-und-stalle...
Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter - "Generation War" outside of Germany, mini-series about a group of friends and their roles in WW2.
https://www.amazon.de/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.9aab6ee1-...
Stromberg - German adaptation of The Office, but Bernd Stromberg (aka Micheal Scott / David Brent) is a bit of an asshole this time and it's not a paper company, but an insurance company.
https://www.amazon.de/Stromberg-Staffel-2/dp/B00ERLPUNA
Tatort - mostly serious show about police solving murders, produced by all of the local public broadcasters, e.g. there are Tatorts from Cologne, Münster, Munich, each using the regional dialect. "Polizeiruf 110" is the version of the ex-GDR, it works the same way. The Münster-Tatort is quite funny:
https://www.ardmediathek.de/sammlung/tatort-folgen-mit-thiel... https://www.daserste.de/unterhaltung/krimi/tatort/index.html
Tatortreiniger - a show about a crime scene cleaner in weird situations. If you know "The Cleaner" from the BBC: This is the original show it's based upon. The main character uses a northern german / Hamburg dialect.
https://www.ardmediathek.de/serie/der-tatortreiniger/staffel...
Hubert und Staller - show about incompetent bavarian rural police solving murders, heavy focus on comedy, bavarian dialect. The first few seasons are quite funny, the later ones are meh.
https://www.daserste.de/unterhaltung/serie/hubert-und-stalle...
Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter - "Generation War" outside of Germany, mini-series about a group of friends and their roles in WW2.
https://www.amazon.de/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.9aab6ee1-...
I liked: Türkisch für Anfänger, Dark, Kleo, ans Stromberg. Unfortunately I’d say IMHO if you’re accustomed to US series you won’t find a lot of German ones that stand up to the production values and acting quality. Dark is a notable exception there I think.
Yes, but "Dark" (Netflix) doesn't have a lot of words spoken per hour, as I recall, so perhaps it's not so good for language learning. There's also "Beat" (Amazon) with a somewhat gruesome main storyline.
If you wanted to get linguistically flummoxed there's "Capitani" on Netflix. (A great story, but it's in Luxembourgish!)
If you wanted to get linguistically flummoxed there's "Capitani" on Netflix. (A great story, but it's in Luxembourgish!)
Mord mit Aussicht
https://imgur.com/a/qqxr7JY just to let you know, sometimes the translation is in the wrong direction when I click on words.
The link translates from English to Japanese for me ;)
ah! I will fix that, thanks!
Clicking on the words launches new tabs/windows into Google for translation. Very annoying.
sending me to Google as a search link is super annoying. Some words (e.g., war, Tag, um) are not only in German, so the translations can be confusing.
Translation can be done prior to displaying the story, and make the words appear as hover boxes, and even provide more language context.
The example story is asking me to log in and subscribe to get a full demo. A demonstration in my mind supposed to demonstrate how the system works prior to commitment.
I am unable to provide you free QC/QA because I would have to give you my email.
Translation can be done prior to displaying the story, and make the words appear as hover boxes, and even provide more language context.
The example story is asking me to log in and subscribe to get a full demo. A demonstration in my mind supposed to demonstrate how the system works prior to commitment.
I am unable to provide you free QC/QA because I would have to give you my email.
I had exactly the same thought about the new tab. Kindles and OSX devices (among others) can already give an intrusive popup with a translation or definition.
I'm an intermediate German speaker and even to me the language in the example story felt weird. I'm totally into the idea, and if the usability was better I'd probably use the site despite the non-idiomatic text.
I'm an intermediate German speaker and even to me the language in the example story felt weird. I'm totally into the idea, and if the usability was better I'd probably use the site despite the non-idiomatic text.
Thanks @WaitWaitWha and @y_y! I definitely want to improve that and have the translations on the same page! Hopefully very soon :) thanks for trying it out.
I have just improved the word translation so that it doesn't send you to Google as the first option. Let me know what you think :)
I've always enjoyed using comics when getting started with a language, Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, etc. Short, limited vocabulary, visual cues, and I'm frequently familiar with the original.
Thanks for sharing this, I'm trying it out now.
One thing I noticed is that the translation links are auto-detecting the language, so some words are assumed by Google to be a language other than German.
One thing I noticed is that the translation links are auto-detecting the language, so some words are assumed by Google to be a language other than German.
Thanks for the feedback! That should be fixed now :) If you have some time, let me know what you think
I am experiencing an issue where if you click a word to get translation, a new Google search with 'translate "war" to english' opens. The problem is that it doesn't try to translate from German. Instead it translates the English word 'war' to Latin for some reason. I think a better search keyword is 'translate "war" from german to english'
Experiencing the same issue. Google is falling apart. It's choosing English as the source language with queries like this, and destination is any language which you may have used recently with translate.
A note to the OP:
translate "Fischerboote" to english - doesn't work
translate "Fischerboote" from german - works
A note to the OP:
translate "Fischerboote" to english - doesn't work
translate "Fischerboote" from german - works
You are right, that would be better, I will improve the search query. Also I'll try to have that on the actual page so that it's a better experience. Thanks for the feedback.
Looks cool! Though, I'd like to note that the fisherman story is not only unidiomatic German, but also contains a bunch of mistakes
Thank you for having a look! Sorry about the issues with the fisherman story, I'll ask my native friend to help improve it. Hopefully I'll get better at this!
I recently started using LingQ for this. It's effortful rather than easy, which makes it a bit harder to develop into a habit, but the technique seems very effective, and the platform works well both when importing content and when studying it.
Maybe you're targeting people who are more casual learners, and aren't willing to do stuff that feels hard?
Maybe you're targeting people who are more casual learners, and aren't willing to do stuff that feels hard?
Wasn't aware of LingQ, thanks for sharing it. Perhaps you are right about the targeting. Casual learners... but also busy people that would benefit from the format. We'll see.
"but also busy people that would benefit from the format"
IMO busy people need tools that give the most learning per time spent, not tools that feel easy at the expense of pace of learning.
These tools tend to require effort (e.g. LingQ, Readlang, Language Transfer) rather than ones that feel easy (e.g. Duolingo).
IMO busy people need tools that give the most learning per time spent, not tools that feel easy at the expense of pace of learning.
These tools tend to require effort (e.g. LingQ, Readlang, Language Transfer) rather than ones that feel easy (e.g. Duolingo).
I believe it’s possible to both feel easy AND be highly effective.
Extensive reading would fall in this quadrant. Trouble is that below a certain level you need lots and lots of graded readers. A somewhat improved version of OP’s project may solve that problem, providing an unlimited firehose of reading at an appropriate level.
Extensive reading would fall in this quadrant. Trouble is that below a certain level you need lots and lots of graded readers. A somewhat improved version of OP’s project may solve that problem, providing an unlimited firehose of reading at an appropriate level.
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As a Native Dutch speaker that story reads like it’s written in an alternative ancient Dutch ancestor, very different vind then what I usually get from German.
Would it be possible to add different translation engines, like DeepL or ChatGPT? (ChatGPT in particular is often much better than all the alternatives.)
Hey this is really a great project! Thanks for sharing. Any thoughts on expanding to other languages?
Hey! Yes, definitely! I will be adding more very soon. Which one are you looking for?
I would love this in Egyptian Arabic.
Ah sure, I could add that. Would that be learning Egyptian Arabic from English?
Yes!
+1 for Spanish
For sure! if you want drop me an email at <myusername> @ gmail and I'll let you know when we have spanish and portuguese
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Additionally, the app format allows for practice questions at the end and you can use LLMs to check whether the answers are correct; so the users can check themselves.
So this is that! Let me know if you have any questions.
https://webbu.app/german