Show HN: Learn German with Games

[predictand]

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!

[elicash]

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)

[HK-NC]

I had a game called Tom Clancy's Division, and a sequel. Theyre very long, grindy, repetitive games with a lot of text, a lot of spoken dialogue with full subtitles, and plenty of collectible audio things that can be replayed. I learned a lot of Russian amd German playing both these games.

[predictand]

That's a really good recommendation! Also, a great excuse to spend more time gaming.

[rspoerri]

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.

[rob74]

Of course, these games won't help improve your fluency in speaking German, but they might help you e.g. remember the correct gender of a noun (and thus its "Artikel"), which is one of the most difficult aspects of German and can only be done through rote memorization.

[gf000]

I like to think of grammar rules and the accompanying tests that make you remember them as.. rules you can use to generate any number of examples to better the language.

You learn a language by being exposed to it countless times, but most of us doesn't have the opportunity to be immersed 100% into a foreign language. Simple rules let us try out new sentences and do some self-checks to cull out the definitely wrong ones.

This makes your "training set" significantly larger without having to "collect that data". Of course it doesn't replace anything, but it is a useful part of the language learning journey, especially the early part. Later on, nothing can replace simple exposure.

[adamredwoods]

I agree with this, I didn't see it as a game or learning anything. It didn't even give me the correct answers if I got it wrong.

This is more of a "quiz" format, not learning. There is a difference.

[IAmBroom]

It's gamified. People like winning games. People dislike taking tests.

[vunderba]

It's a nicely laid out site, but I tried every single activity on the site. Calling them games is... really stretching the definition. They are all interactive quizzes.

[rspoerri]

It's still not learning, it's verification of existing knowledge. It might be more fun than taking tests, nevertheless you cannot learn knowledge by testing knowledge, you can only verify it. Only if the user answers correctly you might consolidate the already existing knowledge.

[predictand]

I think it is fair to call it more practice than learning. I hope to add more games in the future that focus on the learning aspect of things. However, as a beginner, I still find that it helps me learn new words. If I continuously make the same mistake and receive feedback on my answer, it eventually makes me learn what is correct.

[rspoerri]

I thought about that probem as well, and i think an important aspect that you could improve is by showing the correct answer much more visibly.

Right now it's hidden in a corner (iirc), so that i can barely see it. By showing the task and the answer next to each other when doing it wrong, the players might learn something of it.

What i typically recommend my students is to try to transform a learning task in a way that you need to apply a skill, without needing to do the skill itself.

For example playing english text adventure games is a very fun way to learn english. Players need to figure out what to enter using the keyboard and they use classical methods of figuring out the correct content (dictionary, translation) and they still have fun doing so. Even if it's hard work (not so much anymore with deepl etc, but back in the day it was). This can be applied to tons of tasks. - make sure you are not cheated when trading in a game. - keep up your reaction time by playing race games (a very good thing for elderly who want to keep theyr driving skills) - train your dictionary skills in scrabble. - ...

[predictand]

Great feedback, thanks a lot!

[watwut]

I mean specifically for articles, there are only three options. So, eventually you will figure out the correct one based on the feedback.

[tobi_bsf]

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.

[rob74]

There are words that can have several Artikel, sometimes depending on regional differences (e.g. Austrians have different preferences than Germans), sometimes because of multiple meanings of a word. In that case, I would expect the game to accept all valid answers. But I got the impression that all words were singular, so "der" would be the only valid option for "Ausländer". I had a similar issue with "Geschwister", where I picked "das" (correct according to https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Geschwister), but the game expected "die" (which IMHO only makes sense for the plural form). Looks like it needs a bit more QA :)

[aleph_minus_one]

> I had a similar issue with "Geschwister", where I picked "das" (correct according to https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Geschwister)

The actual correct singular form of "[die (since plural)] Geschwister" is "das Geschwist" - a word that is rather obscure even for many native German speakers.

[weinzierl]

Sometimes it's not regional but depends on the intended meaning. "der Schild" is the thing you wear for protection (shield), "das Schild" tells you the way (sign).

[predictand]

The intention with that game was to pick the artikels for the singular form of the words. I am a complete beginner in German, but I thought the artikel for plurals is always 'die'. However, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of exceptions to that rule. As for Geschwister, yep, that seems wrong. I will fix it!

[Lutzb]

I had "Jugendliche". "Der" can make sense for a male person. But "die" would also work, for the female person.

[leipert]

Also for „See“. Der See - the lake. Die See - the sea.

[1718627440]

> I am a complete beginner in German, but I thought the artikel for plurals is always 'die'.

Correct.

> However, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of exceptions to that rule.

Not to this one.

[1718627440]

> with "Geschwister"

I never heard that used as a singular noun. Maybe it is a Swiss thing. If anything you could say 'das Geschwisterkind'.

[rob74]

Actually, the Duden article I linked above says (under "Bedeutungen"):

1. (männliche wie weibliche) Kinder gleicher Eltern, nur im Plural. Beispiele: "die Geschwister sehen sich alle ähnlich", "ich habe drei Geschwister (wir sind vier Geschwister)"

2. einzelner Geschwisterteil. Gebrauch: Fachsprache; auch schweizerisch Beispiel: "das ältere Geschwister"

So, you are correct, the singular form is only used by the Swiss and as a technical term. So maybe the game shouldn't contain it at all? Or accept both "das" and "die", in case someone thinks it has to be plural?

[1718627440]

Yes, that's where I took the Swiss thing from, I haven't heard that word before. As for the technical term, to me that sounds like one of these artificially degendered forms that are en vogue to day. For anyone who doesn't knows it: 'Geschwister' comes from sister, it is kind of like sisterhood, the other term is 'Gebrüder', which is outdated now. (Yes sisterhood would be 'Schwesternschaft', I can't think of an English grammatical equivalent. Maybe something like 'sistered', the participle to sister describing the set of people you are sistered to.)

The feminist crowd just perceives a common male word as gendered and a common female word to be not.

[merelysounds]

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.

[predictand]

Fair enough! I should try to introduce other options that are more game-like.

[rwoerz]

Congrats.

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

[rob74]

Let's not get started with that... those same people also say "viertel vier" to mean 3:15 (one quarter of the "fourth hour" has passed), which is really confusing to the uninitiated, so "viertel nach"/"viertel vor" is preferable IMHO...

[ce4]

It does make sense though (once you know where it comes from):

Before the ubiquity of watches, time was announced using church clocks and bell strikes. There's a big bell for hours (low pitch) and a smaller one for announcing quarters (higher pitch).

Signalling zero is not possible using "zero bell strikes", so 00:00 is signalled by 4 strikes of the quarters bell and 12 strikes of the hour bell.

Thus, the sequences go like:

11:15 1x quarter bell

11:30 2x quarter bell

11:45 3x quarter bell

12:00 4x quarter bell + 1x hour bell

Basically it makes sense then as all the quarters belong to the same hour.

[usr1106]

I have used those time expressions for over 55 years. Never thought about the explanation.

[1718627440]

Yes. The other explanation is that time is nothing special, it gets just counted like everything else. You wouldn't say it's a quarter to a full cake either.

[rob74]

If we follow your argument, the number 3.25 would be read "point two five to four" istead of "three point two five". Which is to say, the fact that the quarters are mentioned in connection to the next hour, not the previous one, is indeed unusual.

[1718627440]

Quarters are named by the hour they are in, neither the one previous or after. The hour number four of the day starts at 3:01 (or 3:00:01 with precision in seconds) and is complete by 4:00, it's the same mistake that people make with centuries.

'dreiviertel Vier' is short for 'dreiviertel der vierten Stunde des Tages'.

[1718627440]

We can agree that there is a big disagreement, but "viertel nach"/"viertel vor" just sounds plain wrong to me.

[chopin]

It's absolutely correct German. Native speaker here.

[1718627440]

Me too. I know. Doesn't change that it sounds plain wrong to me. I guess probably how "dreiviertel X" sounds to you and others. Germany isn't uniform and only a nation state for some short time.

If I try to rationalize it, it is probably that a quarter (to me) is not a distance or difference, but a single thing. So my internal parser expects a Genitiv or another thing after it, not a preposition like 'vor' or 'nach'. 'Zehn Minuten vor/nach X' sounds fine to me, 'eine viertel Stunde vor/nach X' too, but 'viertel vor/nach X' just doesn't.

[hutattedonmyarm]

it's still correct and should be at least accepted as such, even if not explicitly taught

[dvdgsng]

Let's not get started with that... those same people also say "viertel nach drei" to mean 3:15 (one quarter after the "third hour" has passed), which is really confusing to the uninitiated, so "viertel vier" is preferable IMHO...

Yeah? Well, you know, thats just like uh your opinion, man.

And, its dismissive and ignorant. IMHO.

[brettermeier]

Stay with "viertel vor" please :D Well, it depends on where you are in germany...

[nxor]

Somewhat related: if you think German is hard, prepare yourself for the friendly and talkative culture :)

[predictand]

I lived in Canada, Germany, and Switzerland. In my experience, Canadians and Swiss are really nice on average; however, my experience with Germans has generally been on the margins. They have either been very rude or super friendly. I guess that’s what you get when people simply speak their mind.

[rcarmo]

You're doing the Austrians and Swiss Germans a disservice :)

[nxor]

I didn't name a specific country :)

[kleiba]

What do you mean?

[nxor]

What do I mean? Where to start. Interact with some people from the region and you will find out. As most learners of German know, the hard part of German isn't der die das, it's the exclusive culture. I have C1 in German and have been told "You sound unnatural like a Turk" (I am not a Turk) and "Children sound more natural than you" (of course - they are native speakers). You can get every case, every article, and every syllable correct and they will still find a way to laugh at you. Ask for help in Germany and you will be ignored. Or better yet, "I don't want to help you." Then they wonder why people fail to learn their language. Frankly I wish I could unlearn the language.

[1718627440]

> You can get every case, every article, and every syllable correct

For articles, natives say sentences with wrong articles in them too. Seldomly because they don't know it (still happens), but because they change what they want to say mid-sentence. Cases are always a fight between the pendants and people who don't care.

Plain incorrect grammar will of course be noticeable, but grammar isn't everything.

[nxor]

That's not what I meant, and I too switch words mid-sentence.

And even if my word choice, register, or what have you is wrong, I don't understand the attitude. Because when they make mistakes in English I don't even comment.

[1718627440]

I think this really depends on the people you surround yourself with. I'm a native German and I get "complaints" that I do not correct enough, because I just try to have a conversation instead of being a language tutor.

[kleiba]

That's a sample size of 1.

When we moved to a German speaking country from the US some years ago, we didn't have that same experience at all.

[HK-NC]

I've never had an experience like this, but my only practice in-country has been in Österreich, and majority in Wien.

[chopin]

Where was that? Berlin by any chance? That's not representative for Germany.

[flobosg]

I’ve had similar experiences in other, smaller cities. Luckily they are the exception rather than the rule.

[nxor]

Ah yeah, north Germans. I do agree south Germans act differently.

[culebron21]

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.

[ludicrousdispla]

I find the 'Deutschkurse Passau" workbooks [0] to be the best at focusing on grammar structure and providing useful practice. They can be worked through without an instructor (provided you've had some exposure to the grammar at each level.)

0. https://www.deutschkurse-passau.de/JM/index.php/downloads

My main complaint with most of the other German language coursebooks is the grammar lessons are too scattered, and the main effort in doing the exercises is figuring out what they want you to do.

[xg15]

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.

[predictand]

Yep, I noticed AI is terrible with words on images, and that seems to have slipped my attention. Thanks for the callout! I tried to keep the number games tamed by only going up to 3 digits.

[1718627440]

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'.

[predictand]

We have been told that it might be normal to tell the time like that from an analog clock in places where precision matters (like train stations or airports). As a beginner, this is how we started to learn it as well in the course I am taking. I think it makes your brain work harder by making it do more processing (you need to interpret the clock + the numbers, whereas a digital clock simply gives the number to you, so less mental processing is needed). I see where you are coming from, but it helps me with my learning and coursework.

[1718627440]

> where precision matters (like train stations or airports).

That is true. That is called e.g. 'Bahnhofszeit' and follows different rules than normal time telling. You should include that in the game description, otherwise learners may think that is how you tell the time to each other in everyday life.

I think it is less about precision as e.g. 'zwei vor dreiviertel Elf' is as precise as 'zehn Uhr dreiundvierzig', but more about the way of measuring times. E.g. you do round normal time, but truncate 'train station time'.

[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.

[predictand]

That's a good catch! Thanks for reporting.

[1718627440]

I'm curious, how do you write such a bug? Accidental early return in the comparison function or what?

[predictand]

So, in that particular game, I wanted to match a substring, since my data source includes some responses written as "let/allow" or "drive (vehicle)", which isn't realistic to expect the user to type. So, I just figured I would quickly work around that by allowing a substring match. However, I didn't really think about the edge cases all that much.

[1718627440]

Yeah, I guess you should just split your source data into words.

[rcarmo]

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.

[predictand]

Thanks! I definitely want to implement it as well to also make it more mobile-friendly

[jjuliano]

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...

[predictand]

Very cool! I really need to work on my mobile development skills.

[schluete]

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!

[predictand]

Thanks for the correction! That's good to know. I also noticed it isn't dreizig but dreissig, whereas it is vierzig (and not vierssig). I have to double-check whether it is my source that's wrong or just another exception to memorize.

[1718627440]

> dreizig but dreissig

Actually it's 'dreißig'. It can't be 'dreissig', since a double consonant like 'ss' indicates a short vowel, which a diphthong like 'ei' can never be.

[chmod775]

A hundred years ago you might've still commonly seen it spelled "dreiszig".

[1718627440]

They are the same thing, when you don't use latin characters.

[chmod775]

Interesting nitpick, but I must be missing your point somehow.

>They are the same thing

No, that's in fact not the same characters (obviously?), even if they can be used to represent the same phoneme and could thus be viewed as interchangeable. I've made it explicitly clear my comment concerned spelling though.

>when you don't use latin characters.

I have no idea how to parse this, given that all three of them are letters used in latin script. I suppose one of them wouldn't be considered part of the basic latin alphabet, but then your sentence still doesn't make sense to me.

[donq1xote1]

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

[predictand]

There was a small problem with the redirect after registration, but it should now be fixed. Thanks for trying!

[anakaine]

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.

[8mobile]

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.

[predictand]

Thanks for trying! I have been using Duolingo as well and I definitely am considering to add more click-based games.

[ghufran_syed]

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

[vr46]

Took me to my local grafana instance, which was a surprise :D

[predictand]

oooo, good to know!

[fnands]

Nice!

It's a bit similar to Grammatisch, although that just focuses on the grammar.

[fainpul]

https://www.languagetransfer.org/courses#german

[1718627440]

For 'Numbers to Words' you could display the summary ordered by value instead of time. I guess that's more useful for a learner.

[dravenCore]

Learning German can feel tough, but turning it into a game makes it way more fun and less scary.

[tEMporality7]

Looks like this been made with AI. It seems too "clean" and simple and others have pointed out some issues.

[predictand]

Yep, I definitely leveraged AI when building it; however, it is still built by me. So far it is a weekend project, not meant to be a production-grade app with polish.

[whatamidoingyo]

Vercel, React, Tailwind, and Supabase. Most likely made with AI. The hover animations area a giveaway too.

[Panzerschrek]

Your answer: fünfundzwanzig nach elf. Correct: fünfunddreißig vor zwölf.

Your answer: mittag. Correct: punkt zwölf.

Your answer: acht Uhr. Correct: punkt acht.

Was zum Teufel?

[elaus]

Yeah the clock game is weird. One solution was "fünfundzwanzig vor zwei" which I never heard in my life (native German). At least in my region one would say "fünf nach halb zwei" or "Ein Uhr fünfunddreißig".

[1718627440]

Interesting. 'um X' gets labelled wrong as well. I guess at least with times OP needs to throw away the notion of the single correct answer. But yes a lot of these 'correct answers' sound uncommon in talking or in general.

[1718627440]

A thing that OP might also not know: 'punkt acht' is 'precisely at eight', if you want to say 'eight o'clock', that's 'um acht'. The literally meaning of something being 'um' is, that something has passed fully, or is completed.

[chopin]

Your first one gets me puzzled. Normally, you take the shorter time to the full hour. Nobody says 'fünfundvierzig vor zwölf', for example. I never said or heard 'fünfunddreißig vor zwölf'. Before half past an hour everyone says '... nach elf'.

[JayDustheadz]

I apologize for an offtopic but...anyone happen to know anything similar for Ukrainian?

[layer8]

The Time Short Form Game image has a spelling error, and also the clock time doesn’t match the words.

This smells too much like AI slop.

[predictand]

I am a beginner to the language, and it is helping me remember the artikels and learn new words.

[1718627440]

How do you know it's correct.

[predictand]

I am going to the course at the same time and live in a German-speaking country. So, I am able to contextualize and cross-reference my learnings.

[jimmydin7]

thats very nice! i tried it! maybe a leaderboard would be cool

[martin1027]

It looks interesting!

[ixxie]

Sprachspiele!