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Good strike rate for German grammar

  Tags: Gender | Grammar | German
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70 messages over 9 pages: 13 4 5 6 7 ... 2 ... 8 9 Next >>
montmorency
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 Message 9 of 70
19 November 2013 at 1:13am | IP Logged 
Another vote here for Hammer Grammar on this kind of subject.


Interesting that there at least appear to be some exception to the rule that for compound nouns it is the gender of the last word that takes
precedence:

Apparent exception: Das Wort, but die Antwort.

I suppose that the reason is that it isn't a compound noun after all.
Perhaps Josquin or another native speaker would like to comment.

similar comment, but not from a native speaker

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schoenewaelder
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 Message 10 of 70
19 November 2013 at 3:57pm | IP Logged 
A couple more :

der Mut, die Armut
das Wehr, die Abwehr

I guess "Armut" is "arm" plus "-ut" rather than "Mut". Not sure about "Wehr". Maybe
there's an archaic "die Wehr"

[edit] Aha, perhaps "die Anmut" would have been a better example.

Edited by schoenewaelder on 19 November 2013 at 5:45pm

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daegga
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 Message 11 of 70
19 November 2013 at 10:25pm | IP Logged 
in this context, picking 'das Wehr' isn't fair, there is also 'die Wehr' (also
semantically closer to 'Abwehr')
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ScottScheule
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 Message 12 of 70
20 November 2013 at 3:36pm | IP Logged 
beano wrote:
So what would be a good percentage strike rate to aim for?


In what? In discussion? In writing? On Anki?
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beano
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 Message 13 of 70
20 November 2013 at 5:05pm | IP Logged 
ScottScheule wrote:
beano wrote:
So what would be a good percentage strike rate to aim for?


In what? In discussion? In writing? On Anki?


I meant in general discussion. I accept that fact that I'll always make gender errors because my brain isn't a computer and I'm not prepared to spend countless hours poring over lists of words. I think 80% would be reasonable figure. I think there has to come a point when it's more rewarding to learn new words rather than trying to perfect the genders of the ones you already know.

For instance, I know that knife, fork and spoon are das Messer, die Gabel and der Loeffel respectively, but I can't remember the gender of a cooker. I know the word is Herd, and I can use that. But I'd just have to guess the gender in conversation (I know it has to be der or das because you can talk about standing hinter dem Herd)

Edited by beano on 20 November 2013 at 5:07pm

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ScottScheule
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 Message 14 of 70
20 November 2013 at 10:51pm | IP Logged 
Hmm, tough for me to answer then. Depends on how important you think grammatical perfection is vs. vocabulary size, etc. Personally, I just make Anki cards for words, fail them if I get the gender wrong, and that's that. That's the best I can do--if I remember the gender in having conversation, if I don't, I've done my best either way.
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Serpent
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 Message 15 of 70
21 November 2013 at 12:14am | IP Logged 
As for the "exceptions" mentioned, I would say they are derivatives rather than compounds. they are root+affix, not root+root, and they come from verbs and adjectives rather than the nouns that have been mentioned.

Edited by Serpent on 21 November 2013 at 12:19am

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schoenewaelder
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 Message 16 of 70
21 November 2013 at 5:46pm | IP Logged 
beano wrote:

I meant in general discussion. I accept that fact that I'll always make gender errors
because my brain isn't a computer and I'm not prepared to spend countless hours poring
over lists of words. I think 80% would be reasonable figure. I think there has to come
a point when it's more rewarding to learn new words rather than trying to perfect the
genders of the ones you already know.


I guess the simple answer is, if you're happy with it, then it's a good rate. I wasn't
happy with my rate. When I did grammar exercises, or writing articles on Lang-8, it was
always really annoying having to look up the gender virtually every time. Now I
virtually never bother, and I rarely make gender mistakes.

There's a simpler shared Anki Deck then the one I mentined previously
called Der große Artikeltest DE-DE
(DaF)


It's got just over 1000 cards, and they seem reasonably sensible choices. I have spent
the last few months on it, and I ran through the entire deck last night and again today
in 35 and 29 minutes and got 96.7 % both times (35 and 36 errors) Actually only six of
the errors were the same both days, so there is a certain erraticness in my
performance.

To be honest, I really think I should have these nailed down, but there are a few that
I always trip up on (der Lohn, das Gehalt // der Inhalt, der Gehalt // das Institut,
die Anstalt) and my brain is always a bit erratic anyway. I tried to do them
spontaneously, but I think if I was writing and had a second to think, I would get a
better result.

And it's not only when I'm outputting that it helps. When I'm listening to stuff, now
that I know the genders, I can almost immediately work out the correct case of
something, so I know if certain verbs etc take dative rather than accusative. (With
reading, I could probably always do that, as you can usually work it out from context
if you have enough time)

I agree with the computer analogy. I think basically natives have a "gender tag" in
their brains, while we have to use processing power to match up words with genders. I
have been spending up to half an hour a day for the last few months going through that
other "colour coded" deck I mentioned, and I can see that many people would find that
discouraging, but for me it really has been one of the most useful things Ive
undertaken in language learning. It has just relieved me of the burden of consantly
having to think about it, and work out or look up the genders.

Edited by schoenewaelder on 21 November 2013 at 5:51pm



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