Languid Language Learning

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StringerBell
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Re: Languid Language Learning

Postby StringerBell » Wed Aug 22, 2018 11:03 pm

I was signed in using a free (aka crappy) account. I can see there are some potentially cool things available to pro users that I can't access, so maybe that is why it didn't make a great impression on me.
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Cavesa
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Re: Languid Language Learning

Postby Cavesa » Thu Aug 23, 2018 6:03 pm

Elenia wrote:I think the main difficulty for me with German is that they keep on reusing articles! Would it hurt to have a few more, just to keep things clear?!

?! You are complaining of too few articles in German?! Perhaps you should cut down your caffeine intake :-D :-D :-D
(and yes, I know that sounds funny coming from me, the biggest coffee addict on the forum :-) )

The cases are slowly setting in for me (sloooooowwwwly). My main struggle seem to be the declination of adjectives, and I have barely scratched the surface of all the verb related suffering :-D
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Re: Languid Language Learning

Postby Elenia » Thu Aug 23, 2018 8:12 pm

Cavesa wrote:
Elenia wrote:I think the main difficulty for me with German is that they keep on reusing articles! Would it hurt to have a few more, just to keep things clear?!

?! You are complaining of too few articles in German?! Perhaps you should cut down your caffeine intake :-D :-D :-D
(and yes, I know that sounds funny coming from me, the biggest coffee addict on the forum :-) )

The cases are slowly setting in for me (sloooooowwwwly). My main struggle seem to be the declination of adjectives, and I have barely scratched the surface of all the verb related suffering :-D


I'm mostly caffeine free ;) it gives me the jitters and a jippy tummy. Yes, German has too many articles. But if it's going to have so many, it might be nice if they weren't all hopping about with the masculine X becoming the feminine Y while the neuter Z jumps on my head...

I haven't even thought about adjectival declensions yet. It's simply too scary :lol:

StringerBell wrote:I was signed in using a free (aka crappy) account. I can see there are some potentially cool things available to pro users that I can't access, so maybe that is why it didn't make a great impression on me.


Well, I have that version, so maybe you just didn't like it. I'm a firm believer in dropping the tools one doesn't enjoy. Materials might be harder to come by, but for things like Clozemaster, there is always something else one can do instead. But, I know you're also a proponent of this theory!

---

I have done nothing today, and I'm okay with that. I might put in some textbook reading, but I'm engaged in a non-chronological reread of Girl Genius, so I'm making no promises.
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Re: Languid Language Learning

Postby Brun Ugle » Fri Aug 24, 2018 5:42 am

I had the same problem with German articles. It’s not that there are too many, but that they overlap too much. They keep reusing the same ones. “Der” can be masculine nominative, feminine dative, or plural genitive. It’s crazy! Don’t worry though. It will click eventually and then you’ll be fine.
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Re: Languid Language Learning

Postby Cavesa » Fri Aug 24, 2018 4:41 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:I had the same problem with German articles. It’s not that there are too many, but that they overlap too much. They keep reusing the same ones. “Der” can be masculine nominative, feminine dative, or plural genitive. It’s crazy! Don’t worry though. It will click eventually and then you’ll be fine.


Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The three Rs. :-D

It's true the overlaps may be confusing but I don't struggle with that too much. It is neither more nor less complicated, than had they been using more unique ones. Like Des, Dos, Dias, Dur,.... I think we can still count ourselves lucky
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Re: Languid Language Learning

Postby Elenia » Fri Aug 24, 2018 6:35 pm

Cavesa wrote:Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The three Rs. :-D


:lol:

Cavesa- maybe you find it easier because you're used to cases? I know that part of the confusion for me is that the article changes according to case and I have studied only languages where cases are basically non-existent. I've not exactly gotten far with Finnish, but I think I would probably have a bit of an easier time figuring out the system because case endings aren't so tricksy and are all (from what I can remember!) different. Well, I don't know for sure. Janice, what do you think?
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tiia
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Re: Languid Language Learning

Postby tiia » Fri Aug 24, 2018 9:39 pm

The thing with the articles reminds me of this German comedy. So if it's just too much, follow the advice at the end ;)

Or maybe not. :?
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Languid Language Learning

Postby Brun Ugle » Sat Aug 25, 2018 6:10 am

Elenia wrote:
Cavesa wrote:Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The three Rs. :-D


:lol:

Cavesa- maybe you find it easier because you're used to cases? I know that part of the confusion for me is that the article changes according to case and I have studied only languages where cases are basically non-existent. I've not exactly gotten far with Finnish, but I think I would probably have a bit of an easier time figuring out the system because case endings aren't so tricksy and are all (from what I can remember!) different. Well, I don't know for sure. Janice, what do you think?

I found the Finnish cases much easier than the German ones as a beginner. And it was because there was no overlap. You always knew which case it was. The concept of cases doesn’t bother me at all. It was the having to figure out what the case and gender was each time. Interestingly, I also got annoyed with German for its reusing of verb forms. I kept wishing it could be more like Spanish with a different verb form for every occasion so I could easily see what’s what. Of course, English does the same thing as German, so it seems funny that it would bother me, but it did at first.

Cavesa, thanks for the first laugh of the day. That was hilarious.
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Re: Languid Language Learning

Postby Cavesa » Sat Aug 25, 2018 12:28 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:
Elenia wrote:
Cavesa wrote:Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The three Rs. :-D


:lol:

Cavesa- maybe you find it easier because you're used to cases? I know that part of the confusion for me is that the article changes according to case and I have studied only languages where cases are basically non-existent. I've not exactly gotten far with Finnish, but I think I would probably have a bit of an easier time figuring out the system because case endings aren't so tricksy and are all (from what I can remember!) different. Well, I don't know for sure. Janice, what do you think?

I found the Finnish cases much easier than the German ones as a beginner. And it was because there was no overlap. You always knew which case it was. The concept of cases doesn’t bother me at all. It was the having to figure out what the case and gender was each time. Interestingly, I also got annoyed with German for its reusing of verb forms. I kept wishing it could be more like Spanish with a different verb form for every occasion so I could easily see what’s what. Of course, English does the same thing as German, so it seems funny that it would bother me, but it did at first.

Cavesa, thanks for the first laugh of the day. That was hilarious.


I'm glad I could be of service :-)

It is possible that I am finding the cases in general not so scary, but they also still weird, as German has only 4, so the overlaps and changes are rather huge. I am really glad to have been learning Latin ages ago. The Latin cases are closer to Czech and I was struggling with memorisation of the declinations (due to the silly and lazy younger me), not with the use of the cases so much. Right now, I am not a Latin learner, nor am I goo at the language, but some of the neural pathways are probably still there, and the familiarity helps.

But still, I think the effect of already knowing a language with cases before trying German is often being overrated. The main "advantage" over the most usual learner (an English monolingual complaining on the Duolingo forums for example) is skipping the "but why do they have the stupid cases anyways, why can't it be simple like English?!" and "Do I have to learn all this? Do the natives really use it in real life?" phase :-D
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Re: Languid Language Learning

Postby gsbod » Sat Aug 25, 2018 1:17 pm

I remember the articles in German being a bit of a headache too - there was just a bit too much information to parse in one go for a system that was completely new to me, since it involved both the gender and the case. It started to settle down once I was more familiar with which noun had which gender and which situation requires which case - because in each situation as long as I knew one of those things I was able to figure out the other and therefore my brain had less work to do. In comparison, the verbs were not too much trouble - certainly less troublesome than a Romance language.

Although having learned Japanese, articles, pronouns and conjugating for the person of the verb all seem pretty superfluous to me.
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