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Language Learning Is Dead, Long Live Language Learning!

“In the future, noone will have to learn languages,” my grandpa said and adjusted his ski goggles. “With the help of technology you’ll one day be able to speak and understand every tongue on earth.”

We were inching our way up over a steep ridge deep in the French Alps, the chair lift swaying and creaking in the icy headwind.

“Perhaps for translating single words,” I said, thinking of my recent failed attempts to use Yahoo’s Babelfish for my French homework. “But a machine wi...

7 Ways To Learn German with ChatGPT

AI chatbots can be an amazing tool for language learning, especially if you’re studying on your own. There are several potential benefits to using AI chatbots for language learning, such as providing personalized and customized instruction, allowing learners to practice their language skills in a interactive and engaging way, and offering instant feedback and correction.

In theory, AI chatbots can be more affordable and accessible than traditional language lessons, making them a useful option f...

5 Ways To Learn German with ChatGPT

AI chatbots can be an amazing tool for language learning, especially if you’re studying on your own. There are several potential benefits to using AI chatbots for language learning, such as providing personalized and customized instruction, allowing learners to practice their language skills in a interactive and engaging way, and offering instant feedback and correction.

In theory, AI chatbots can be more affordable and accessible than traditional language lessons, making them a useful option for learners who may not have access to a teacher or who cannot afford expensive language courses. But are they any good? Today I’d like to explore some tips and tricks how you can integrate ChatGPT into your language learning routine.

In my examples I will focus mostly on learning German, but most of these should work for other languages as well.

Please note that AI (not unlike humans) is fallible and will sometimes get things wrong or just be generally weird. Caution is advised!What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a chatbot that uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to understand and respond to user input. NLP is a branch of artificial intelligence that deals with the interaction between computers and human language, and it is used to enable chatbots like ChatGPT to understand and interpret human speech.

This can be useful for a variety of purposes, such as providing information, answering questions, or engaging in interactive conversations. It doesn’t really “understand” language in any sense of the word, but if you feed it the right input you can get impressive outputs. Remember: GIGO (garbage in, garbage out)

For the time being ChatGPT is free and anyone can use it here: chat.openai.com/chat (needs registration).

1. Set ChatGPT To Your Target Language

Every conversation with this chatbot is running in a thread. While you can’t change its default language you can set its output language per thread by writing something like:

let’s speak German

Here’s the response I got:

Gerne. Wie möchtest du gerne sprechen?

Translation: Sure. How would you like to speak?

Note: “Gerne” means “gladly” or “with pleasure” in German. “Wie” means “how” and “möchtest” is the informal second-person singular form of the verb “mögen,” meaning “to like.” “Du” is the informal second-person singular pronoun, similar to “you” in English. “Gerne sprechen” is the infinitive form of the verb “to speak,” and “möchtest” is the conjugated form of the verb “to like” in the present tense.

As you can see, not only did ChatGPT respond in German, it even provided a translation and further explanation of the word “gerne”. That’s pretty helpful!

Let’s continue the conversation:

Wie geht es dir?

Mir geht es gut, danke der Nachfrage. Wie geht es dir?

Translation: I’m doing well, thank you for asking. How are you?

Note: “Wie geht es dir?” is a common way to ask “How are you?” in German. “Mir geht es gut” means “I’m doing well” and “danke der Nachfrage” is a common way to say “thank you for asking.” “Wie” means “how” and “geht” is the third-person singular present tense conjugation of the verb “gehen,” which means “to go.” “Es” is a pronoun that means “it” and “dir” is the second-person singular pronoun, similar to “you” in English.

You see how well this works? Simply by having a chat conversation with this bot you can learn quite a bit.

2. Correct Your Grammar And Spelling

As you’ve seen above this bot seems to “know” quite a lot about grammar and spelling. Will it be able to correct my input and perhaps provide additional information? Let’s give it a try:

Can you correct my German grammar and spelling?

Sure, I’d be happy to help with that! To get started, could you provide the German sentence or text that you would like me to correct? I’ll do my best to help with any grammar or spelling issues that I can identify. Please keep in mind that I am a large language model trained by OpenAI, so my knowledge is based on the text that has been fed into my training data. If there are any specific topics or areas that you would like me to focus on, let me know and I will do my best to assist.

That sounds promising! Let’s give it some broken grammar and spelling:

Ich habe ein House gekaufed. Es ist zehr schon.

Here is a corrected version of your sentence:

“Ich habe ein Haus gekauft. Es ist sehr schön.”

In this sentence, “House” should be spelled “Haus” and “gekaufed” should be spelled “gekauft”. Additionally, “zehr” should be spelled “sehr” and “schon” should be spelled “schön”. In German, nouns are always capitalized, so “Haus” is capitalized in the corrected sentence. I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions or if you would like me to provide more detailed explanations.

Not bad at all! It caught all of my spelling errors, fixed the participle “gekauft” and even reminded me that nouns are always capitalized, although that wasn’t really an issue here.

3. Ask for Explanations About Grammar

From what we’ve seen above, ChatGPT seems to have a knack for explaining linguistic stuff. Let’s try to have it explain one of my favorite German grammar topics: Wechselpräpositionen (yay!)

I’m having a hard time with Wechselpräpositionen. Can you explain them to me in simple terms?

Wechselpräpositionen, also known as “dative-accusative prepositions” or “two-way prepositions,” are a type of preposition in German that can take either the dative or the accusative case, depending on the meaning of the sentence. These prepositions are called “Wechselpräpositionen” because they can “switch” between the dative and the accusative case.

The most common Wechselpräpositionen in German are:

an (at, to)auf (on, onto)hinter (behind)in (in, into)neben (next to)über (over, above)unter (under, beneath)vor (in front of)zwischen (between)

The case that these prepositions take depends on the meaning of the sentence. For example, if the preposition is indicating a location or destination, it takes the accusative case. For example:

Er setzt sich an den Tisch. (He sits down at the table.)Sie hängt das Bild auf die Wand. (She hangs the picture on the wall.)

On the other hand, if the preposition is indicating a direction or movement, it takes the dative case. For example:

Er geht auf den Tisch zu. (He walks towards the table.)Sie sieht dem Mann hinterher. (She watches the man walk away.)

It can take some practice to learn when to use the dative or accusative case with these prepositions, but with some practice and exposure to the language, it will become more natural. I hope this explanation helps clarify things for you. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask and I’d be happy to help.

Alright, so while it generally is an okay-looking answer to my question, there is a glaring issue here. It switched dative and accusative! For location or destination we use dative, and for direction or movement we use accusative. Whoops!

As I’ve heard someone say recently: “ChatGPT is very confident, but it’s also very confident when it’s wrong.” Keep in mind that it’s currently in an early phase and may get better over time. For now, you can definitely use it to explain basic grammar stuff (the list of prepositions it gave above is accurate for example), but I’d always double check with a human (or human written resource).

4. Let It Write Simplified Stories For You

Yes, I know, as an author of German stories for beginners I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but ChatGPT can actually write some basic stories which may be useful for reading comprehension.

Tip: Use “simple language”, “Leichte Sprache” or similar keywords to make sure it keeps its syntax and vocabulary light and easy.

Hey, can you write a German story for me in simple language?

Gerne! Hier ist eine kurze Geschichte auf Deutsch:

Es war einmal ein kleines Mädchen namens Anna. Sie lebte in einem kleinen Dorf in den Bergen. Anna liebte es, im Wald spazieren zu gehen und die Natur zu beobachten. Eines Tages beschloss sie, tiefer in den Wald zu gehen, als sie je zuvor gewesen war.

Sie lief den ganzen Tag und kam zu einem kleinen Fluss. Der Fluss war kristallklar und sah sehr einladend aus. Anna beschloss, ihre Füße im Fluss zu kühlen. Als sie im Wasser stand, bemerkte sie plötzlich eine kleine Flasche, die im Schlamm lag. Sie grub sie aus und öffnete sie. Zu ihrer Überraschung fand sie einen Zettel darin, auf dem stand: “Wünsch dir etwas, und es wird wahr!”

Anna war sehr aufgeregt. Sie dachte lange nach und wünschte sich schließlich, dass sie immer glücklich sein würde. Plötzlich fühlte sie sich von innen heraus warm und glücklich. Sie wusste, dass ihr Wunsch in Erfüllung gegangen war.

Von da an lebte Anna ein glückliches Leben im Wald. Sie genoss jeden Tag und war immer dankbar für alles, was sie hatte.

Alright! There’s no real narrative tension here and the “plot” is … well, basic, but it’s something to read. Also, I do think some of the words and expression may not actually be all that “simple”, but you can certainly use such a story for practicing. Now let’s have it create a glossary of difficult words from the text and translate them to English:

Can you create a table of difficult words from this story and translate them to English?

Gerne! Hier ist eine Tabelle mit einigen schwierigen Wörtern aus der Geschichte und ihren Übersetzungen ins Englische:

kleines Mädchenlittle girlDorfvillageBergemountainsWaldforestspazieren gehento go for a walkNaturnaturetieferdeeperFlussriverkristallklarcrystal cleareinladendinvitingFüße kühlento cool one’s feetSchlammmudZettelnotedarinin it

Pretty impressive!

In next steps you could now ask ChatGPT to continue writing the story (just write “continue”), translate the whole text to English or other things. I’ve even experimented with having it come up with simple text comprehension questions for these stories and it worked surprisingly well.

5. Come Up With Personalized Study Plans

Many times students ask me how many words they should learn per day and how to space study session over time intervals to maximize their efforts. Recently, I read about someone having ChatGPT coming up with a nutrition and exercise plan, so let’s see if it can do something similar for a language study plan:

I want to learn 5000 new words in German over a period of one month. Can you come up with a study schedule for me?

Sure, here is a possible study schedule for learning 5000 new words in German over the course of a month:

Week 1:Day 1: Start by learning the most common 500-1000 words in German. This will give you a strong foundation to build upon.Day 2: Continue learning more words, focusing on words that are related to your interests or hobbies.Day 3: Review the words you have learned so far. Quiz yourself or try using the words in sentences to test your understanding.Day 4: Learn more words, focusing on words that are commonly used in everyday conversation.Day 5: Review the words from the previous days, and try to use them in conversation with someone who speaks German.Day 6: Take a break and relax.Day 7: Review all the words you have learned so far, and continue learning new words.Week 2:Day 8: Continue learning new words, focusing on words that are related to your work or profession.Day 9: Review the words you have learned so far, and try to use them in different contexts.Day 10: Learn more words, focusing on words that are commonly used in written German, such as in books or newspapers.Day 11: Review the words from the previous days, and try to use them in writing.Day 12: Take a break and relax.Day 13: Review all the words you have learned so far, and continue learning new words.Week 3:Day 14: Continue learning new words, focusing on words that are related to travel or geography.Day 15: Review the words you have learned so far, and try to use them in conversation with someone who speaks German.Day 16: Learn more words, focusing on words that are commonly used in specific situations, such as at a restaurant or in a store.Day 17: Review the words from the previous days, and try to use them in these specific situations.Day 18: Take a break and relax.Day 19: Review all the words you have learned so far, and continue learning new words.Week 4:Day 20: Continue learning new words, focusing on words that are related to your personal interests or hobbies.Day 21: Review the words you have learned so far, and try to use them in conversation with someone who speaks German.Day 22: Learn more words, focusing on words that are commonly used in a specific region or dialect of German.Day 23: Review the words from the previous days, and try to use them in conversation with someone who speaks that dialect.Day 24: Take a break and relax.Day 25: Review all the words you have learned so far, and continue learning new words.Day 26: Continue learning new words, focusing on words that are related to your personal interests or hobbies.Day 27: Review the words you have learned so far, and try to use them in conversation with someone who speaks German.Day 28: Learn more words, focusing on words that are commonly used in a specific region or dialect of German.Day 29: Review the words from the previous days, and try to use them in conversation with someone who speaks that dialect.Day 30: Take a break and relax.Day 31: Review all the words you have learned so far, and celebrate your accomplishment of learning 5000 new words in German!

Remember to be consistent with your studying and to practice using the words in real-life situations as much as possible. This will help you to retain the words and improve your overall understanding and fluency in German. It’s also important to take breaks and give yourself time to rest and relax, as this will help you to stay motivated and focused on your goal. Good luck with your studies!

Well, okay. While the general instructions aren’t bad (albeit very basic), ChatGPT apparently doesn’t seem to understand how many days there should be in a month. Bad robot!

Conclusion

While ChatGPT in its current form (December 2022) is pretty impressive, I think it’s obvious from the above examples that it has its strengths and weaknesses. As it stands I think it can be a great tool to have basic conversations in your target language, let it correct your spelling and grammar, and produce little stories or text for practice sessions. When it comes to explaining more complex topics, there’s definitely some potential here, and if you can’t afford textbooks or tutors it may be an okayish alternative, but please keep in mind to always (!) look at results with a critical eye.

UPDATE: Another cool idea I just stumbled over, using ChatGPT to create interactive German text adventures:

What do you think? Have you experimented yet with ChatGPT in language learning? Let me know in the comments!

–

The post 5 Ways To Learn German with ChatGPT appeared first on LearnOutLive.

5 Neat Tricks For Using AI In Language Learning

AI chatbots can be an amazing tool for language learning, especially if you’re studying on your own. There are several potential benefits to using AI chatbots for language learning, such as providing personalized and customized instruction, allowing learners to practice their language skills in a interactive and engaging way, and offering instant feedback and correction.

In theory, AI chatbots can be more affordable and accessible than traditional language lessons, making them a useful option for learners who may not have access to a teacher or who cannot afford expensive language courses. But are they any good? Today I’d like to explore some tips and tricks how you can integrate ChatGPT into your language learning routine.

In my examples I will focus mostly on learning German, but most of these should work for other languages as well.

Please note that AI (not unlike humans) is fallible and will sometimes get things wrong or just be generally weird. Caution is advised!What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a chatbot that uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to understand and respond to user input. NLP is a branch of artificial intelligence that deals with the interaction between computers and human language, and it is used to enable chatbots like ChatGPT to understand and interpret human speech.

This can be useful for a variety of purposes, such as providing information, answering questions, or engaging in interactive conversations. It doesn’t really “understand” language in any sense of the word, but if you feed it the right input you can get impressive outputs. Remember: GIGO (garbage in, garbage out)

For the time being ChatGPT is free and anyone can use it here: chat.openai.com/chat (needs registration).

1. Set ChatGPT To Your Target Language

Every conversation with this chatbot is running in a thread. While you can’t change its default language you can set its output language per thread by writing something like:

let’s speak German

Here’s the response I got:

Gerne. Wie möchtest du gerne sprechen?

Translation: Sure. How would you like to speak?

Note: “Gerne” means “gladly” or “with pleasure” in German. “Wie” means “how” and “möchtest” is the informal second-person singular form of the verb “mögen,” meaning “to like.” “Du” is the informal second-person singular pronoun, similar to “you” in English. “Gerne sprechen” is the infinitive form of the verb “to speak,” and “möchtest” is the conjugated form of the verb “to like” in the present tense.

As you can see, not only did ChatGPT respond in German, it even provided a translation and further explanation of the word “gerne”. That’s pretty helpful!

Let’s continue the conversation:

Wie geht es dir?

Mir geht es gut, danke der Nachfrage. Wie geht es dir?

Translation: I’m doing well, thank you for asking. How are you?

Note: “Wie geht es dir?” is a common way to ask “How are you?” in German. “Mir geht es gut” means “I’m doing well” and “danke der Nachfrage” is a common way to say “thank you for asking.” “Wie” means “how” and “geht” is the third-person singular present tense conjugation of the verb “gehen,” which means “to go.” “Es” is a pronoun that means “it” and “dir” is the second-person singular pronoun, similar to “you” in English.

You see how well this works? Simply by having a chat conversation with this bot you can learn quite a bit.

2. Correct Your Grammar And Spelling

As you’ve seen above this bot seems to “know” quite a lot about grammar and spelling. Will it be able to correct my input and perhaps provide additional information? Let’s give it a try:

Can you correct my German grammar and spelling?

Sure, I’d be happy to help with that! To get started, could you provide the German sentence or text that you would like me to correct? I’ll do my best to help with any grammar or spelling issues that I can identify. Please keep in mind that I am a large language model trained by OpenAI, so my knowledge is based on the text that has been fed into my training data. If there are any specific topics or areas that you would like me to focus on, let me know and I will do my best to assist.

That sounds promising! Let’s give it some broken grammar and spelling:

Ich habe ein House gekaufed. Es ist zehr schon.

Here is a corrected version of your sentence:

“Ich habe ein Haus gekauft. Es ist sehr schön.”

In this sentence, “House” should be spelled “Haus” and “gekaufed” should be spelled “gekauft”. Additionally, “zehr” should be spelled “sehr” and “schon” should be spelled “schön”. In German, nouns are always capitalized, so “Haus” is capitalized in the corrected sentence. I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions or if you would like me to provide more detailed explanations.

Not bad at all! It caught all of my spelling errors, fixed the participle “gekauft” and even reminded me that nouns are always capitalized, although that wasn’t really an issue here.

3. Ask for Explanations About Grammar

From what we’ve seen above, ChatGPT seems to have a knack for explaining linguistic stuff. Let’s try to have it explain one of my favorite German grammar topics: Wechselpräpositionen (yay!)

I’m having a hard time with Wechselpräpositionen. Can you explain them to me in simple terms?

Wechselpräpositionen, also known as “dative-accusative prepositions” or “two-way prepositions,” are a type of preposition in German that can take either the dative or the accusative case, depending on the meaning of the sentence. These prepositions are called “Wechselpräpositionen” because they can “switch” between the dative and the accusative case.

The most common Wechselpräpositionen in German are:

an (at, to)auf (on, onto)hinter (behind)in (in, into)neben (next to)über (over, above)unter (under, beneath)vor (in front of)zwischen (between)

The case that these prepositions take depends on the meaning of the sentence. For example, if the preposition is indicating a location or destination, it takes the accusative case. For example:

Er setzt sich an den Tisch. (He sits down at the table.)Sie hängt das Bild auf die Wand. (She hangs the picture on the wall.)

On the other hand, if the preposition is indicating a direction or movement, it takes the dative case. For example:

Er geht auf den Tisch zu. (He walks towards the table.)Sie sieht dem Mann hinterher. (She watches the man walk away.)

It can take some practice to learn when to use the dative or accusative case with these prepositions, but with some practice and exposure to the language, it will become more natural. I hope this explanation helps clarify things for you. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask and I’d be happy to help.

Alright, so while it generally is an okay-looking answer to my question, there is a glaring issue here. It switched dative and accusative! For location or destination we use dative, and for direction or movement we use accusative. Whoops!

As I’ve heard someone say recently: “ChatGPT is very confident, but it’s also very confident when it’s wrong.” Keep in mind that it’s currently in an early phase and may get better over time. For now, you can definitely use it to explain basic grammar stuff (the list of prepositions it gave above is accurate for example), but I’d always double check with a human (or human written resource).

4. Let It Write Simplified Stories For You

Yes, I know, as an author of German stories for beginners I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but ChatGPT can actually write some basic stories which may be useful for reading comprehension.

Tip: Use “simple language”, “Leichte Sprache” or similar keywords to make sure it keeps its syntax and vocabulary light and easy.

Hey, can you write a German story for me in simple language?

Gerne! Hier ist eine kurze Geschichte auf Deutsch:

Es war einmal ein kleines Mädchen namens Anna. Sie lebte in einem kleinen Dorf in den Bergen. Anna liebte es, im Wald spazieren zu gehen und die Natur zu beobachten. Eines Tages beschloss sie, tiefer in den Wald zu gehen, als sie je zuvor gewesen war.

Sie lief den ganzen Tag und kam zu einem kleinen Fluss. Der Fluss war kristallklar und sah sehr einladend aus. Anna beschloss, ihre Füße im Fluss zu kühlen. Als sie im Wasser stand, bemerkte sie plötzlich eine kleine Flasche, die im Schlamm lag. Sie grub sie aus und öffnete sie. Zu ihrer Überraschung fand sie einen Zettel darin, auf dem stand: “Wünsch dir etwas, und es wird wahr!”

Anna war sehr aufgeregt. Sie dachte lange nach und wünschte sich schließlich, dass sie immer glücklich sein würde. Plötzlich fühlte sie sich von innen heraus warm und glücklich. Sie wusste, dass ihr Wunsch in Erfüllung gegangen war.

Von da an lebte Anna ein glückliches Leben im Wald. Sie genoss jeden Tag und war immer dankbar für alles, was sie hatte.

Alright! There’s no real narrative tension here and the “plot” is … well, basic, but it’s something to read. Also, I do think some of the words and expression may not actually be all that “simple”, but you can certainly use such a story for practicing. Now let’s have it create a glossary of difficult words from the text and translate them to English:

Can you create a table of difficult words from this story and translate them to English?

Gerne! Hier ist eine Tabelle mit einigen schwierigen Wörtern aus der Geschichte und ihren Übersetzungen ins Englische:

kleines Mädchenlittle girlDorfvillageBergemountainsWaldforestspazieren gehento go for a walkNaturnaturetieferdeeperFlussriverkristallklarcrystal cleareinladendinvitingFüße kühlento cool one’s feetSchlammmudZettelnotedarinin it

Pretty impressive!

In next steps you could now ask ChatGPT to continue writing the story (just write “continue”), translate the whole text to English or other things. I’ve even experimented with having it come up with simple text comprehension questions for these stories and it worked surprisingly well.

5. Come Up With Personalized Study Plans

Many times students ask me how many words they should learn per day and how to space study session over time intervals to maximize their efforts. Recently, I read about someone having ChatGPT coming up with a nutrition and exercise plan, so let’s see if it can do something similar for a language study plan:

I want to learn 5000 new words in German over a period of one month. Can you come up with a study schedule for me?

Sure, here is a possible study schedule for learning 5000 new words in German over the course of a month:

Week 1:Day 1: Start by learning the most common 500-1000 words in German. This will give you a strong foundation to build upon.Day 2: Continue learning more words, focusing on words that are related to your interests or hobbies.Day 3: Review the words you have learned so far. Quiz yourself or try using the words in sentences to test your understanding.Day 4: Learn more words, focusing on words that are commonly used in everyday conversation.Day 5: Review the words from the previous days, and try to use them in conversation with someone who speaks German.Day 6: Take a break and relax.Day 7: Review all the words you have learned so far, and continue learning new words.Week 2:Day 8: Continue learning new words, focusing on words that are related to your work or profession.Day 9: Review the words you have learned so far, and try to use them in different contexts.Day 10: Learn more words, focusing on words that are commonly used in written German, such as in books or newspapers.Day 11: Review the words from the previous days, and try to use them in writing.Day 12: Take a break and relax.Day 13: Review all the words you have learned so far, and continue learning new words.Week 3:Day 14: Continue learning new words, focusing on words that are related to travel or geography.Day 15: Review the words you have learned so far, and try to use them in conversation with someone who speaks German.Day 16: Learn more words, focusing on words that are commonly used in specific situations, such as at a restaurant or in a store.Day 17: Review the words from the previous days, and try to use them in these specific situations.Day 18: Take a break and relax.Day 19: Review all the words you have learned so far, and continue learning new words.Week 4:Day 20: Continue learning new words, focusing on words that are related to your personal interests or hobbies.Day 21: Review the words you have learned so far, and try to use them in conversation with someone who speaks German.Day 22: Learn more words, focusing on words that are commonly used in a specific region or dialect of German.Day 23: Review the words from the previous days, and try to use them in conversation with someone who speaks that dialect.Day 24: Take a break and relax.Day 25: Review all the words you have learned so far, and continue learning new words.Day 26: Continue learning new words, focusing on words that are related to your personal interests or hobbies.Day 27: Review the words you have learned so far, and try to use them in conversation with someone who speaks German.Day 28: Learn more words, focusing on words that are commonly used in a specific region or dialect of German.Day 29: Review the words from the previous days, and try to use them in conversation with someone who speaks that dialect.Day 30: Take a break and relax.Day 31: Review all the words you have learned so far, and celebrate your accomplishment of learning 5000 new words in German!

Remember to be consistent with your studying and to practice using the words in real-life situations as much as possible. This will help you to retain the words and improve your overall understanding and fluency in German. It’s also important to take breaks and give yourself time to rest and relax, as this will help you to stay motivated and focused on your goal. Good luck with your studies!

Well, okay. While the general instructions aren’t bad (albeit very basic), ChatGPT apparently doesn’t seem to understand how many days there should be in a month. Bad robot!

Conclusion

While ChatGPT in its current form (December 2022) is pretty impressive, I think it’s obvious from the above examples that it has its strengths and weaknesses. As it stands I think it can be a great tool to have basic conversations in your target language, let it correct your spelling and grammar, and produce little stories or text for practice sessions. When it comes to explaining more complex topics, there’s definitely some potential here, and if you can’t afford textbooks or tutors it may be an okayish alternative, but please keep in mind to always (!) look at results with a critical eye.

What do you think? Have you experimented yet with ChatGPT in language learning? Let me know in the comments!

–

The post 5 Neat Tricks For Using AI In Language Learning appeared first on LearnOutLive.

New Release: Dino lernt Deutsch Collector’s Edition (Books 9-12)

After the release of my latest book Sturm auf Sylt I’ve received many emails asking about the next Dino lernt Deutsch Collector’s Edition (9-12), and I’m happy to report that after more than a month of (re)formatting, pixel-herding and code-wrangling, it’s finally ready!

As always you can get it as a Kindle edition, Paperback, or (for the first time) directly from our shop as a digital download (EPUB/MOBI/PDF):

Get Book

As mentioned before, this volume includes a complete rework of the vocabulary sections and updated flashcards in Quizlet and Anki format.

Regarding the paperback edition, I’ve also made some tweaks to the interior to keep the amount of pages (and printing cost) as low as possible.

Don’t get me wrong! It’s still a 650+ page whopper chock-full of German learning fun, but I gave some extra attention this time to minimizing any extraneous white space and optimizing non-story content (vocabulary, questions, answer keys, etc.) to keep our arboreal friends happy.

Also, if you prefer to get your books from Apple Books, Barnes & Nobles, Book Depository or other places, this Collector’s Edition should pop up there as well within the next couple of weeks.

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The post New Release: Dino lernt Deutsch Collector’s Edition (Books 9-12) appeared first on LearnOutLive.

New Release: Dino lernt Deutsch Collector’s Edition (Books 9-12) 🎉

After the release of my latest book Sturm auf Sylt I’ve received many emails asking about the next Dino lernt Deutsch Collector’s Edition (9-12), and I’m happy to report that after more than a month of (re)formatting, pixel-herding and code-wrangling, it’s finally ready!

As always you can get it as a Kindle edition, Paperback, or (for the first time) directly from our shop as a digital download (EPUB/MOBI/PDF):

Get Book

As mentioned before, this volume includes a complete rework of the vocabulary sections and updated flashcards in Quizlet and Anki format.

Regarding the paperback edition, I’ve also made some tweaks to the interior to keep the amount of pages (and printing cost) as low as possible.

Don’t get me wrong! It’s still a 650+ page whopper chock-full of German learning fun, but I gave some extra attention this time to minimizing any extraneous white space and optimizing non-story content (vocabulary, questions, answer keys, etc.) to keep our arboreal friends happy.

Also, if you prefer to get your books from Apple Books, Barnes & Nobles, Book Depository or other places, this Collector’s Edition should pop up there as well within the next couple of weeks.

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New Release: Dino lernt Deutsch Volume 12

Dino lernt Deutsch episode 12 Sturm auf Sylt is finally here!

It’s currently available on Amazon (as Paperback or Kindle edition) or directly from our store as a digital download:

Get Book
As always, the book comes with custom English-German vocabularies for each chapter, quick comprehension quizzes, original illustrations and free flashcards (Anki & Quizlet).

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository and other editions will follow soon. Also an audiobook and a new collector’s edition are in the works.

Dino Does The Island

In this sequel to Lockdown in Liechtenstein, Dino joins a motley crew of travelers on a meme-fueled pilgrimage to the northernmost German Island of Sylt.

Disillusioned by a post-pandemic world and growing financial woes, punks, nerds and slackers from all over the republic have banded together to crash the favorite holiday spot of the super rich and famous.

When Dino and his new-found friends cross paths with a local entrepreneur they are plunged headlong into a world of pecuniary promises, but all that glitters is not gold.

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How To Learn German Grammar By Yourself

Recently I received an interesting question by Ollie Lovell from Breakthru Languages about how to learn German grammar on your own. Since this is a probably a question many of you have, I wanted to talk a bit about this issue today.

If you’re already participating in a structured course or working with a tutor, you’ll naturally be exposed to your fair share of German grammar. But what about everyone studying on their own? How to go about establishing a solid foundation of German grammar? And is it even worth it?

Why bother?

First of all, I have to admit that before becoming a teacher, I was a bit on a Kriegsfuß¹ with grammar myself. Despite having a natural affinity for picking up foreign languages and always getting high scores, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the terminology used to describe the moving parts of a sentence, differentiating accusative from dative objects, and so on and so forth.

My point was, why bother if I could get by just fine by simply having a feel for things?

And yes, true. If you’re an intuitive learner like me, you can get very far just playing it by ear. But once I became a teacher (forcing me to get up to speed in all things syntax, morphology, etc.) I realized how valuable even a little bit of grammar awareness can be to navigate difficult questions, not just for dealing with students but also in my own studies.

For example, when faced with two possible variants of a sentence or ending, you can just pick what “feels right”. And depending on your language sense, you’ll sometimes guess right, and sometimes wrong. It’s a bit like betting. But thanks to grammar you’ll be able to make your guesses much more educated and shift the odds in your favor.

Just to make things clear, I don’t think that everybody needs 10/10 grammar acuity. Some people will always be naturally inclined to a more analytical approach to language, while others will continue to rely more on feel.

You don’t need to know everything. But a little bit of grammar goes a long way.

Having said that, it can be a dauting process, especially in German the complexity can get overwhelming very quickly.

So, where to start?

Apart from the option of joining a course or working with a tutor (which is great if you have the time and funds to spare), how to begin establishing a solid foundation of German grammar when learning by yourself?

In my answer to Ollie, I came up with two core strategies:

Pick up any common German textbook, read through the explanations and work through the exercises cover to cover.Identify problematic areas yourself and use helpful(!) online resources to read through the explanations and do the exercises.

Let’s go through these step by step:

While (1) may be the most thorough and systematic approach, it’s not always the most efficient, because you’ll end up covering lots of ground, much of which may or may not be relevant to your specific needs.

A Wild German Textbook Appeared

So, which German textbooks are good? To be honest, any standard textbook will do just fine. Some may be more text-based, while others offer more illustrations and additional materials, but since the system of German grammar remains pretty much fixed (unlike orthography, mind you!), they’ll all largely cover the same ground.

Personally, I had good experiences using the Schritte² series by Hueber with some of my beginner students. It progresses quite slowly and introduces grammatical concepts very gently. Keep in mind however, that the books are written in German (including explanations), so if that’s not something you want to deal with, I’d recommend checking out these excellent free German workbooks targeted at English speakers.

Now, if you don’t like the more guided approach of going through a textbook chapter by chapter, the second option is to target specific areas you’re struggling with and look up explanations and exercises by yourself.

Let’s get grammatical!

This method can be just as effective as working with a tutor or textbook, but it requires a good portion of independence and motivation, since you’ll not only have to “diagnose” your weak spots, but also know where to find good resources for explanations and exercises.

To give you an example from a slightly different area, I’ve never formally studied programming languages. But whenever I needed to do something I started researching very specific areas, reading explanations and then practicing (helped along by copious amounts of coffee and trial and error).

I’m not a maths person (like, not at all), and my overall knowledge almost certainly pales in comparison with more traditionally trained coders, but over the years I’ve accrued enough Gefährliches Halbwissen³ to build up a highly customized online shop, turn design ideas into production code and maintain my own web-server. In short, I don’t know everything (far from it), but it’s okay as long as I know what I need to know.

When it comes to coding, resources like StackOverflow and W3CSchools have been invaluable to me on this journey, so what are similar resources for picking up enough German grammar for your personal needs?

One site that I can’t recommend highly enough is Toms Deutschseite. The founder originally created it to help his then girlfriend (today his wife) to learn German, and despite the dated design this is one of my all-time favorite resources.

Tom breaks down every topic in the most simple non-jargon way, something that most traditional textbooks still struggle with to this day. Plus, there are detailed exercises (including solutions) to each and every topic.

In other words, even if you’ve never studied grammar before, his straightforward explanations paired with the exercises are just perfect for self-learners, since a) it’s easy to follow along and b) you’ll always be able to check how much you’ve actually understood. He put more than 1500 hours of work into this project, and it’s all free! No ads, popups and other shenanigans. Definitely check it out.

Another similar resource is the website of German teacher Nancy Thuleen. Again, the site’s design may look a bit dated, but in terms of content it’s a true treasure trove I’ve been using for many years working with students from all ages and stages.

Nancy provides easy-to-follow explanations (handouts) on everything from accusative objects to Konjunktiv, detailed enough to give you confidence without being overwhelming, while also including excellent printable worksheets (Arbeitsblätter) with solutions.

If you’ve done all the exercises on a specific topic provided by Tom or Nancy and need more, I also recommend mein-deutschbuch.de. Everything is written in German, including the explanations, but their worksheets are high-quality and always come with solutions.

In short, you really don’t need to spend another dime to start building your foundations of German grammar today.

The internet is a great place for self-directed learners to pick up almost anything from auto-repair to zebra training (don’t ask), and I’m confident that anyone with a bit of motivation and go-getter grit can make huge progress learning German grammar online. Paired with apps like Duolingo, flashcards and graded readers like my Dino lernt Deutsch series, you’ll be surprised how far you can get without ever having booked a single German class.

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¹warpath (literally: war foot)
²disclaimer: affiliate link
³smattering of knowledge (literally: dangerous half-knowledge)

this post originally appeared on the Learn German with Stories newsletter

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9 Fun Facts About The German Alphabet

Have you ever wondered what the differences are between the German and the English alphabet, why some German words seem to go on forever and what these strange dots over the vowels mean? Here are nine quirky factoids:

1. The German Alphabet has 4 extra letters

The German alphabet uses the same 26 letters like the English alphabet, but there are 4 extra letters: ä, ö, ü (so-called Umlaute) and ß which is known as “ess-zett” or “scharfes S” (“sharp S”).

While the Umlaute are just variations of the common vowels a, o and u, the letter ß is unique to the German language. It sounds like the “ss” sound in “hiss” and is used for every “sharp s” sound after a long vowel. For example: “das Maß” (measure), but “die Masse” (mass). In Swiss German the ß is not being used and always replaced by “ss”.

2. You can sing the German Alphabet but it sounds very different

While the melody is the same, you’ll notice that almost all of the letters have different names than in English. There are many variances, but here is a common pattern: all the letters that have a name ending with “ee” in English, have the ending “eh” in German. For example, the letter B (bee) sounds like “beh”, P (pee) sounds like “peh” in , D (dee) becomes “deh”, etc.

And then there are those letters that have completely different names: H (age) becomes “hah”, J (jay) becomes “yott”, W (double-you) becomes “veh”, V (vee) becomes “fow” (as in “fowl”), the letter Y (why) becomes “ipsilon” and so on and so forth.

The only letters that have the exact same names in English and German are: F, L, M, N, S.

3. WT*: V is W but sounds like F

Did you ever notice that when Germans speak English, they’ll pronounce words such as waiter like “vaiter” and we like “vee”? As funny as this German accent may sound, there’s actually a reason for that. In German the letter W is always pronounced like the V in English.

For example the German word wunderbar is correctly pronounced like “voonderbar”. Similarly, many English speakers will pronounce the car manufacturer Volkswagen “volksvagon” but the correct pronunciation sounds more like “folksvahguhn”.

Additionally, the letter V in German is often pronounced like F in English. So a word like Vater (father) is pronounced like “fahturr”.

4. There is (technically) no limit to how long German words can get

Thanks to the German language’s love for compound nouns, words can get very long very quickly. Technically there is no limit to how many words you can string together. In the wild you’ll find most of these compound monsters in the realms of legalese and officialese.

The Duden dictionary has the following unwieldy words from the Dudenkorpus (digital database of editors) on their top 2:

Rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/De-Rinderkennzeichnungs-_und_Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz.ogg
(pronunciation by Tosca via Wikimedia, GNU)
literally “Cattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation law”

Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/De-Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung.ogg
(pronunciation by Jeuwre via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0)
literally: “regulation on the delegation of authority concerning land conveyance permissions”

As long as these words may get though, there is an iron rule. The last element of these compound nouns is what determines the gender of the whole beast. Hence, the first example would be neuter das Rinder……gesetz because it’s das Gesetz, and the second female: die Grundstücks….verordnung because it’s die Verordnung.

5. The most common letter is “E”

Here’s another thing the German alphabet shares with the English one: the most common letter is E.

However if you look at the frequency charts side by side, the other letters in the top 5 vary greatly in both languages:

GermanEnglish1.EE2.NT3.IA4.SO5.RI6. German has its own Spelling Alphabet

Some letters just sound too similar; when you need to spell a word and want to make absolutely sure that letters aren’t misheard, for example over the telephone, there’s a special spelling alphabet that replace each letter with a clearly distinguishable word, such as Bravo for B, and Foxtrot for F in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

In German we call this a Buchstabiertafel or Buchstabieralphabet, and there’s a unique set of names for each letter/sound:

LetterWordAAntonBBertaCCäsarDDoraEEmilFFriedrichGGustavHHeinrichIIdaJJuliusKKaufmannLLudwigMMarthaNNordpolOOttoPPaulaQQuelleRRichardSSiegfriedTTheodorUUlrichVViktorWWilhelmXXanthippeYYpsilonZZeppelin

Interestingly this phonetic alphabet used to look very different before the year 1934. Under the reign of the national-socialists, anything that didn’t confirm to their arbitrary ideas of “racial purity” was deleted from the spelling alphabet and replaced with more “Germanic-sounding” names.

Originally, D was “David”, J was “Jakob”, N was “Nathan”, S was “Samuel” and so on and so forth, which are of course all Hebrew names from the Bible.

There have been some recent attempts to restore the old German spelling alphabet and/or replace the letters with city names, but in daily life German speakers will often just use a mix of both the old and the new versions. Switzerland on the other hand, who didn’t fall under the same dark spell, still largely uses the old spelling alphabet until this day.

7. (Some) Consonants Are Hard As Steel

It’s a common stereotype that German sounds “harsh” and “tough”, and while that’s not necessarily true, there is in fact a very specific phenomenon where consonants get toughened up when they appear at the end of a word.

We call this “Auslautverhärtung” (literally: “end sound hardening”). Put simply it means that each B, D, G at the end of a word turns into P, T, K. It is an absolute rule which is never broken.

Let’s look at some examples:

der König (king) sounds like -> Könik

gelb (yellow) sounds like -> gelp

das Bild (picture) sounds like -> Bilt

This is why many German speakers often struggle when pronouncing English words with soft plosives at the end. Hence, kid will become kit, dog becomes doc, sophisticated becomes sophisticatet, and so on and so forth.

8. These Sentences Contain the Whole German Alphabet

Maybe you’ve stumbled over the sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. This is a so-called pangram of the English language, i.e. a sentence that contains all letters of the English alphabet. Here are some fun German pangrams:

First, let’s look at those containing all 26 letters without ß and ä,ö,ü:

“Jeder wackere Bayer vertilgt bequem zwo Pfund Kalbshaxen.”

Translation: “Every valiant Bavarian comfortably devours two pounds of veal shank.”

“Bei jedem klugen Wort von Sokrates rief Xanthippe zynisch: Quatsch!”

Translation: “To every wise word of Sokrates, Xanthippe cynically shouted: Nonsense!”

Now, let’s up our game and add the other 4 special letters:

“Zwölf laxe Typen qualmen verdächtig süße Objekte”

Translation: “Twelve easy-going dudes puff suspiciously sweet objects.”

“Falsches Üben von Xylophonmusik quält jeden größeren Zwerg.”

Translation: “The wrong practice of xylophon-music tortures every larger dwarf.”

9. The Most Common Word is “der”

The most common word formed by letters in the English language is “the”. Similarly, in German it’s the definite article “der”, followed by “die” and “und”. Interestingly the neuter definitive article only appears on place 8 in the frequency chart.

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4 Ways To Practice Speaking German Online (For Free)

Whenever I talk to German learners I never miss out on the opportunity to ask about the biggest challenges when learning German, and dreimal darfst du raten* what are the most commons answers:

Articles (der/die/das)Declension (Akkusativ/Genitiv/Dativ, etc.)Other grammar stuff (Passiv/Aktiv, Konjunktiv, etc.)

So, yeah. That’s not too surprising. German grammar is tricky. (Here are some good sources for worksheets and free textbooks if you need help with that).

Recently however when I’ve asked people about their biggest challenges, I’ve been hearing something that tops even these grammar issues: speaking practice.

I’m not sure if this is pandemic-related, because traveling is still somewhat difficult in late 2021, but it certainly makes sense that speaking practice is not always easy to come by, especially if you don’t live in a German-speaking country.

So I’ve been looking around for good German speaking practice opportunities online.

First of all, you can of course always join an online course, Zoom (fatigued yet?), etc. but even there, depending on the number of participants the time allotted to each speaker may be very limited.

Are there places online where you can just have a casual chat in German with other learners and perhaps a couple of natives?

Turns out, yes!

Deutsch auf Discord

In case you’re not familiar with Discord, it’s a group-chatting platform originally built for gamers that has since become a general use platform for many kinds of communities.

Each community lives on its own server, complete with different channels, both for writing and speaking, sharing links or just hanging out.

One of the biggest and most active Discord servers for German learners is called “German Learning and Discussion”. It has almost 50,000 members and is open to join for anyone interested.

To join a voice chat, simply click on one of the rooms with the speaker icon (see image below).

The average age on this Discord (as on many other Discord servers) seems to skew a bit towards millennials/Gen Z, but in general I found it to be a very friendly and welcoming space to German learners, where often some native speakers hang out as well. If you need help with anything the moderators are also usually very responsive.

Another Discord server commonly frequented by language learners is The Language Sloth. This is not just for German, but it’s a very active server. If you’re not familiar with Discord, once you join a server there’s usually a specific procedure of selecting your role (proficiency, native language, etc.) and introducing yourself before you can join text and voice channels, so make sure to carefully read through the instructions, usually found under “rules” or “info” in the sidebar.

Clubhouse

Next up is Clubhouse, the audio-based social media app that has been taking the world by storm since 2020. The way it works that people host so-called “rooms” where anyone can join. You’ll be muted by default when first joining a room and will have to ask for permission to speak by raising your hand (tap on the hand icon).

To find rooms for German speaking practice, simply search for “learn German” or “German practice” and you’ll see a lot of different people and clubs that host German speaking practice rooms. If you can’t find a room that’s currently active, make sure to note down the times for scheduled rooms in the club or member profiles.

Twitter Spaces

Last but not least, there’s Twitter Spaces, which is in many ways the same like Clubhouse, only that you don’t need the Clubhouse app to join. It’s open for anyone with a Twitter account. You can even listen in anonymously from your laptop, but if you do want to speak you’re going to need the Twitter mobile app.

So far I haven’t found many German practice “spaces” out there, but you can actively search for them by typing “filter:spaces” into the search bar in Twitter to find them.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with this feature and hosting a few Twitter spaces for German learners on our main LearnOutLive German Twitter, and it’s been a lot of fun talking to German learners from all over the world. I even heard from a couple of avid Dino lernt Deutsch readers, which is always fun.

So far we don’t have a fixed schedule for these yet (still trying out different time-zones to give as many people as possible an opportunity to speak), but please feel free to follow us there as well.

Whenever we host a space you can see that it’s active when there’s a purple ring around our profile (see below). For more information, see the official how-to by Twitter as well. You can also go to our profile and turn on the little bell icon to get notified about new tweets.

Tandem Practice

Another option of practicing German online is finding a tandem partner, i.e. a 1:1 relationship where you teach each other your own native language. While the concept is great, and it can be very effective in theory, in my personal experience finding a tandem partner that is equally committed and disciplined is often difficult in practice.

There will always be a certain disbalance of one person being more motivated or more skilled at explaining, and it can be very difficult to find that sweet spot. See also Michael Schmitz’s article 5 Reasons why Tandem Partners Don’t Work on smartergerman.

Having said that, your mileage may vary, and there are many websites where you can find tandem partners for learning German. A quick Google will yield thousands of results. I can’t vouch for any of these sites personally, so I’m not going to link them here, but I’d be happy to hear from you which sites have worked for you (or haven’t).

Also, what are your favorite places of practicing your German speaking skills online? Let me know in the comments.

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* “You have three guesses.”

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