dragontamer @ dragontamer @lemmy.world

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For 'easy songs' at my level, it's about 100% understanding. Stuff like Backe Backe Kuchen, or Kopf und Schultern, Knie und Fuß are easy enough for A1 to fully understand.

For 'hard Songs' above my level, it's more about vague understanding. The harder, the more vague I'm allowed to be with it.

Either way, being able to parrot out the song back (even with bad pronunciation + errors) should help me learn new words. I'm actually able to sing substantial parts of Im Walde von Toulouse, but I don't understand it at all lol.

When I say A2 in this post, it means I've given up on full understanding (for now), because I know it's too hard. I'll come back for 100% understanding maybe a month or two from now after more vocab practice! A2 is beyond me, but all the A1 songs are stuff I've been able to understand.

For some 'bipolar Songs' like Nudeltag, I try to get 100% understanding of the days of the week. But Ive given up on trying to understand all the different foods or what's going on. Parts of this song are A1 appropriate, but other parts are far harder, maybe A2 or even B1 level.

A friend who studied Japanese told me of someone who sounded like Mickey Mouse when talking in English. Apparently that person extensively watched... you guessed it. Mickey Mouse to learn English.

Songs and cartoons are fine learning, but make sure you balance it out with normal stuff! (Newscasts, normal study practice and the like)

Your learning material influences you for sure.

I did attempt some talking in German language Discord, and I was horrified at how bad I am at speaking. It makes sense as it was my first time, but I'm unable to form sentences or phrases even. At best I could shout out one or two words and hope it was on the subject.

I've decided that the only fix is to get an in person tutor, to ensure I'm not mute through my studies.

On my song practice, I've begun to branch out to real German songs rather than just the Children songs I've been working on for months.

Real songs are faster with more complex rhythm, but aren't always much harder from a vocabulary perspective (!!!!).

I found Applaus Applaus: https://youtu.be/H0oRftpQs7w

And I'm picking up enough words that I think I should make this my first real German Song to understand (of even memorize the lyrics to). Many many songs remain far above my level but maybe the huge number of English cognates (Sextant, hammer, etc. etc) is making this one feel approachable.

I probably should write a guide on my songs from A1 to A2. There's a lot of kidsongs out there and they all have different focuses and help with learning in different ways.

Well that's the funny part now isn't it?

Increasingly, the investors are other AI companies. NVidia, Microsoft, Facebook. Be it directly (ie: Microsoft buying half of OpenAI), or indirectly (Special Purpose Vehicle creates a new Data center and Facebook pays to be an owner of that and then the Datacenter pays Facebook for AI or some shit).

From people? No.

From AI. AI companies have seemingly infinite money (not really but investor sentiment is huge and investors are happy giving more and more money to AI). And banks are willing to lend money to AI. And there's new financial instruments (special purpose vehicle) allowing even more money to come out of investors.

This ends after AI runs out of money. But they are funded by the biggest tech bros with $Trillions in valuation.

Coffee break German seems too slow for me.

While I'm barely picking anything up, Gothe-Geschichten (on Spotify) seems far more applicable and useful. They still talk very slowly but it's 100% German. I assume it's around A2+, but it seems like even as a beginner A1 I'm making progress with it.

Easy German on YouTube is strange. It's clearly full of B2+ speaking but it's all very slow. There's some segments for A1/A2 beginners. It feels like most of Easy German is more for the B1++ levels, where they need slow but complex talking (trying to reach Native...)

In all cases, slow German isn't real German. It's a useful stepping stone as I reach the next skill level, but it's clear I need to find full speed practice somewhere somehow. Or in other words: slow German helps me learn new concepts. But I need something that reinforces my already known concepts and brings them up to native speed IMO.

The best I got for that is the nearly daily A2 level news briefs from DW. https://learngerman.dw.com/de/kurz-und-leicht/s-69137519

It's about the same speed as any news broadcast, so it's still slower than German Comedy or real life German talking. But it's the closest thing to a real but still beginner-friendly German learning material IMO.

I'm finally able to listen and comprehend some of the Kinderlieder I've been working on for a month. I've been branching out to other learning material. There really isn't much in the A1 level. A lot of stuff on Spotify is A2+.

I started trying some practical listening exercises however, and I'm just not quick enough with listening. No where close to the necessary speed. Reading / writing can be taken much slower, meaning I can do far more complex reading/writing than I could ever hope to accomplish with listening/speaking.

I'll continue my +10 words/day (aka: +20 cards/day) with Anki but its become clear that listening and speaking are the weakest points of myself. I've decided that I need to log into "Learning German Discord" more often, both as listening practice and speaking practice. My writing is still awful though, I'm barely able to compose a sentence (let alone speak complete sentences). But both speaking and writing are separate skills (even if somewhat related). So it makes sense to practice both.

Today I was only able to respond with 2 or 3 word phrases to anything in an actual discussion. But its also literally the first time I've ever tried speaking in German, so it makes sense as a starting point.

Be careful with the plastic spatula used to flip your eggs I guess.

Except you know, plastic isn't a real chemical. There's polyethylene, polypropylene, polyurethane, and silicone... of which there are food grade versions and non food grade versions of said plastics (and many thousands of formulations).

Anyone bullshitting with scare words like 'Plastic' are immediately discounted by me. Real scientists are at least specific with their terminology and not using weasel words that have effectively no meaning in a serious discussion

Meanwhile my buddy gets fucking arsenic poisoning and there's not even a ruckus about it at all. Do you know what a REAL poisoning is like?

Ultraprocessed bullshit word by Make America Healthy Again bullshitters.

They think a can of corn is ultraprocessed. When in actuality it is just boiled corn in a can. The sooner the health food bullshitters are exposed for the crap they are, the sooner we get rid of RFK Jr. And his team of bullshit health advice.

We need to stop it with the fake science... And start to favor real science again.

Any methodology that labels canned corn and canned spinach as evil/unhealthy but labels fucking Five Guys as healthy is fully bullshit. Period.

80% recall for Young cards. It's pretty bad for any card 1 day or less, but I guess I'm reasonably confident that 2-day or larger interval cards have very high chance of me recalling.

An hour is a bad day where I need lots and lots of reviews. But it happens sometimes.

Maybe I'm trying too hard to recall without failing myself.

I will say that I am aiming at perfect spelling, pronunciation and gender. So 'Das Stadt' is wrong (Die Stadt is the correct Gender). But German is a very precise language and I feel it necessary to drill at least to this level.

I've come to the realization that my "20 cards per day" in Anki is only 10 actual words per day, meaning I'm making half as much progress as I thought I was. I'm currently doing about 10 seconds per card, but I'm averaging 30 minutes to even 1-hour per session of ~100 cards these days (somewhere between 180 views to 300 views).

I'd like to increase this to 20 words per day, but honestly its already very grueling, and I don't want to spend all my freetime each day on Anki. I still haven't made much progress in Nico's Weg, Basic German Grammar and Workbook, and Cafe in Berlin / Dino in Germany A1 series. If anything, I need to cut my Anki time down and focus on the other stuff. Maybe when I finish my textbook studies I can go back to increasing Anki to more cards/day.

I did watch Ghosts (German edition) here last night: https://www.ardmediathek.de/serie/ghosts/staffel-1/Y3JpZDovL3dkci5kZS9naG9zdHM/1 . Watching full-speed German comedy for the first time is mind-opening, it shows how "fast" real German can be. I fortunately found some English fansubs + OpenFansubs Firefox plugin that allowed me to watch that sitcom with English subtitles at least. I do plan on watching more German TV to "get used to real life German".

"Peppa Pig" / Peppa Wutz in German is a commonly recommended Children's TV Show to test your German. I've been trying to watch it each week to gauge my progress, often disheartened at how little I understand. However, various people online have told me that Peppa Wutz might be closer to "late A2" studies or even "early B1 studies", so that makes me feel better. It does mean that my "schedule" is all out of whack due to lack of understanding. Peppa Pig/Wutz being late A2 means its something I "should" be trying maybe 4 or 5 months into my studies, not something in my 1st or 2nd month.

Still, I'll keep trying Peppa Pig. "Real German" (even if its slow and for children) is more immersion than most other exercises. But I cannot and should not use it as "comprehensible input" (ie: learning material). The goal of comprehensible input is that you spend maybe 80% to 90% of the time doing something you know, and only learning on those 20% to 10% you don't know. "Cafe in Berlin" reading material, Nicos Weg, and "Simple German Youtube" are the only stuff that really is "Comprehensible Input" right now.

The "simplest of kids songs" (ie: Backe Backe Kuchen) is comprehensible to me right now, but many kid songs (ie: "Im Walde von Toulouse") are far, far too difficult for me right now.

Not from 1950, but is at least as old as 1920.

Telephones gained popularity in the 1890s, so I'm not sure how much older this sci-fi concept of poker telephones could have even existed.

The 1920s was when Telephones were entering mainstream use, and no longer an absurdly rich persons toy. The idea of a poker telephone forcing you to work is more working-class mindset, so I find it hard to believe that the idea would come much earlier than 1920.

Note that the technology for wireless radios was popularized in the 1920s as well. Militaries used wireless / radio communications in the 1900s through WW1 but it could only be afforded by Navy and Battleships (the most expensive military equipment). WW1 Tanks used lol semaphore flags for communication !!!!!!!

As radio got more popular, the marriage of phone and radio would inevitably come up as a sci concept.

My actual long term goal is to be able to watch Peppe Wurtz and comprehend the episode.

I've also got Deutsche Walle A2 News (news graded at the A2 level) that I'm trying to read and watch, but that's still far above my skill level. I'm better with news than German, so I watch (American) news in English the. Watch the A2 graded news and kinda learn new words lol.

https://learngerman.dw.com/de/kurz-und-leicht/s-69137519

The book was basically the first thing I was able to do (and indeed, level A1 level). Everything else is more like high A2 or low B1 level....

I wouldn't say that it's a goal to read Cafe in Berlin, because I'm actively doing it! It's more of a true and proper exercise.

We are on the 25th month?

Anki is far more grueling than beginners realize. And it's very difficult to predict future work.

Adding new word isn't just work today (maybe 5+ viewings to get Anki to make you think you've learned the word....), it's also multiple showings over tomorrow, later this week and more.

You must change your words/day to something that is doable. Keep an eye on your Anki usage, if it's longer than you want then cut down on your new words/day until you master your current review set.

And always be careful with the new words button. It's more work to learn 20 words than you might realize, so don't double or triple it to 40 or 60!!!!

20 words/day is about 30 minutes of Anki for me, because 80 reviews + 20 new words == 100 cards. But I need around 300 flips to finish Anki.

That's 30 minutes of Anki in practice (a card flip averaging 6 seconds, 10 cards per minute and yes 30 minutes/day).

If I drop down to 0 new words/day, I still have the 80 reviews per day (at least until those old words are mastered). Eventually I get quicker and Anki believes I've learned the words but it can take literally days before your workload decreases.

You must also remember that Anki / Flashcards is rote memorization. Its your "brute force cudgel". You can never truly reach mastery with Anki alone. Anki is great for spelling practice, pronunciation practice (if you have included real-world audio .mp3 with your flashcards)... and if necessary is a forced German -> English vocabulary memorization tool.

Useful skills yes, but language mastery can only happen with reading, writing, listening and speaking. Aka: "Immersion". Anki is great because it helps minimize the time spent on flashcards. If you aren't saving time but instead feel like you're wasting time, then you need to change Anki settings to something more useful.

Anki has been used to master Jeopardy, and is also becoming a popular tool in the medical community.

Anki may have been invented for language, but its useful for almost any studying.

Another small note on FSRS settings - adjusting the desired retention a little bit can be helpful. Defaults at 90%, turning it down makes review intervals longer, up makes them shorter. For large decks (vocab lists), I prefer it down at mid-high 80s. You want familiarity, not perfection, so less overwhelming reviews can be better.

Depends really. If you are drilling der/das/die genders and spelling, you might want perfection.

But yes, drop the FSRS setting to 80 or even lower for familiarity. If you are focusing on reading/consuming, it's better to focus on familiarity instead.

But if you are studying writing/speaking, you need to set that retention back up to 90 and also aim for perfection on each card.

In general, 90% is closer to perfection and the highest you typically should go. However, medical students have been known to aim for 95% or higher (?!!!!!?!??!!) because they want to pass an exam and then forget about it later, lol.

So even going above 90% makes sense for some communities out there.

Medical students are willing to drill 4-hours per day on their subjects and want near 100% memorization in time for their exam. It's a different kind of learning, but Anki does support that.

I'm about 1.5 months into my German studies, and I was able to just read the entire first Chapter of "Cafe in Berlin" (beginner story for German-learners, graded A1 and A2).

I think the biggest "leap forward" was multiple weeks of study in Anki, allowing me to reach a vocabulary of roughly 300+ words at the moment. Its not much, but its enough to get started reading these simplest of stories.

Feel free to ask me questions here too! Thanks to Lemmy, I can see posts here as well as in the original topic.

I wish Anki existed during my SAT days.

Do you know hard it was to learn 1000+ SAT words without Anki back then? I had to use like, a book. And index cards written by hand. My hand cramped up just writing all those words down.