HN Reader

127

106

I just started learning German, and it has been a frustrating experience, to say the least. There are so many seemingly arbitrary rules that make pattern recognition very difficult. Therefore, I have been looking for ways to make memorization a bit easier and fun. So, I came up with a bunch of games to make learning German a bit more engaging. Hope you find it useful as well!

On the topic of learning German with games, the recommendation I've seen before is that many games have language options and depending on the type of game you can learn a lot that way just because you spend SO many hours in it.

So the Sims, I'd guess, is probably a good example for building vocabulary. Edit: example https://dasboudicca.substack.com/p/i-learned-german-and-siml... (This writer has lots of game learning reviews)

3 months agoby elicash

I don't see how people can learn a language by tests, which are only telling you if you did it right or wrong. I can see how this is used to verify the existing knowledge, but I don't see any usage in learning.

3 months agoby rspoerri

Nice, not sure if "Guess the Artikel" makes sense this way. Sometimes it’s not clear whether the word is singular or plural, which affects the article. For example, I got "Ausländer," which can either be "die" for plural or "der" for singular.

3 months agoby tobi_bsf

Congrats on the launch!

Quick feedback: the website looks very polished and intuitive. I especially liked the test about articles, where I didn’t have to type. I liked that the website works well on mobile too. The content is not what I’d call games though; based on the name I expected something different than test questions and quizzes.

3 months agoby merelysounds

Congrats.

Some German natives may argue that the time short forms are wrong as they prefer "dreiviertel" instead of "viertel vor".

3 months agoby rwoerz

3 months agoby nxor

I've tried lots of German text books, and 99% of them are essentially very easy grammar tests, which you quickly learn to fill, without actually learning to speak. In Goethe Institut's courses you also simply fill many tests, but in a group. This may help preparing for an exam, but not to learn anything.

That said, I'd love to see excercises on a really hard matter: verb controlling the noun. E.g. ich vermeide <which prep?> <noun|infinitive>. And not just random verb + random object, but sequences of the same verb, to get it remembered.

3 months agoby culebron21

It's a really cool idea! Watch out for AI mistakes though, especially when generating content in a foreign language. I see one mistake in the "Time Short Form Game" image where the image has "habl" for what should probably mean "halb".

Also, I'm not sure if converting between 5 digit numbers and words is a good starting task, unless you want to dive right in with German's (in)famous word chaining ability.

3 months agoby xg15

The 'German Time Game' is confusing (at least to a native). The answers you want to hear are words you would say about a digital clock, it's highly uncommon to use this to tell the time from an analog clock. Maybe you should consider showing a digital clock for this game. What you would use for an analog clock is what you call 'Time Short Form'.

3 months agoby 1718627440

At least https://www.learngermanwithgames.com/games/german-verbs-to-e... : has a bug. It shows correct, as soon as your substring matches. Thus, you can enter the first letter of the word and it will show it as correct.

3 months agoby 1718627440

Nice, but as someone who can read some German but not write it accurately, I found it rather hard to type any accurate answers. Having some sort of multiple choice options would be very useful to begin with.

3 months agoby rcarmo

I did something similar back in 2019 but for learning Dutch with games, which I made originally for my child but this kinda helps me remember many A2 words and helps me with the exams. Now I have the Dutch citizenship.

Not as extensive as the site but with the images, interactions, it helps with remembering the vocabularies. https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Joel+Bryan+J...

3 months agoby jjuliano

Native german speaker here, this is pretty nice!

One mistake I found though: in the clock game the game's solution for one o'clock times is "eins", like "eins Uhr dreissig" for 1:30am/pm. That's not correct, you'd use "ein" instead of "eins", so the correct solution would be "ein Uhr dreissig"

Keep up learning german, I know from non-german coworkers how hard the language can be to get a grasp on!

3 months agoby schluete

Got some problems opening your site. Love to see more such Gameficition Apps in the education area.

3 months agoby donq1xote1

These are flashcards at best, and thus become memory tools. There's little no no learning occurring here for someone who wants to learn German, but has not yet started. Sorry.

The layout looks nice.

3 months agoby anakaine

I tried the app because I'd like to improve my German. The UI is well-designed, but it would be nice to have prompts like Duolingo, as this is a bit too difficult.

I'll test it more, congratulations.

3 months agoby 8mobile

fyi, the account confirmation email redirects and ends up on a tab with address localhost:3000. looks like it did work, i was able to login after that, but many users may assume it failed and give up

3 months agoby ghufran_syed