Duolingo

[watervole]

I'm having fun with Duolingo.

Odd really. I hated learning German at school and wasn't much good at it - though I did pass my O-level.

About two weeks ago, I started playing around with German on Duolino and more of my school German seems to have lasted than I thought.

I'm actually finding it relaxing re-learning and learning new German.

I just successfully translated "The man eats the cheese" to  Der Mann isst den Käse and I feel really good about that.

I got both genders correct. Man and cheese are both masculine. I got the nominative and accusative case correct, so in spite of both being masculine, the man is 'der' and the cheese  is 'den'.  And I did it from memory!

I'm finding tricks for remembering gender that I never had at school and am thus actually managing to get most genders correct (so far).  eg.  For 'cheese' I think of men with smelly feet to remember that 'Käse' is masculine.

This is me, getting de-stressed by learning German genders and irregular verbs!

The world is a very strange place...

Comments

[espresso_addict]

Thanks for linking this. You inspired me to get out my German dictionary a few days ago and brush up some words on my own. I've just tried the Duolingo courses but the German one seems *much* easier than the French one -- I tested far better in German than French, when I'm far more fluent in the latter.

Are you finding the course continues to work for you?

[watervole]

I'm still enjoying it and expanding my vocabulary, though it does have limitations as a course.

The speed of response means that my verb handing is improving and my plurals are getting better.

the drawback is that there is no decent dictionary.

I find it pays to click on the discussions - there are often comments by people who will expand on what a word means or why it is used in a particular way.

Someone pointed me at Ankiweb for German Duolingo, but I haven't tried it yet as Ankiweb is unknown to me. https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/815785344

[espresso_addict]

I've always been rubbish at plurals. I'm finding adjective endings are my biggest bugbear. We have a huge (paper) dictionary, but I notice it is dated 1981, so it's not going to be much help over words for the internet &c!

[watervole]

I haven't got as far as the adjective endings yet, but I know they await me...