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.

[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 :)

[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...

[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 :)

[kleiba]

What do you mean?

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[jimmydin7]

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

[martin1027]

It looks interesting!

[ixxie]

Sprachspiele!