[Course Forum] 5000 German Words (Top 87% sorted by frequency) by poncoosh

Community-Created Courses German
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Hello @dylan.nicholson.548

Another minor issue that could be improved is where the prompt does not contain the definite article “the”, but the answer requires it. Some examples are:

der Schluss, prompt: “Conclusion, end, ending, closure, close”
die Nähe, prompt: “proximity, vicinity, closeness”
der Dummkopf, prompt: “dumb person, idiot”
der Zufall, prompt: “Coincidence, accident, fluke, chance occurrence”
die Nähe, prompt: “Proximity…”

Different items:

Level 80, “die Spitze” - it is kind of surprising to see only “lace” as the acceptable translation of this.

Level 81, “der Wissenschaftler” - only accepted answer is “academic” although I would have thought that “scientist” was more common.

Level 82, “die Leiter” appears twice in the word list. (Incidentally, this list only has 14 words, including the duplicate, unlike the usual 15 in this course.)

Level 84, “wachsen” - should “anwachsen” be accepted (or not rejected…)?

Level 86, “derjenige” - the prompt is “that (one), the (one) (‘d_’)”, but it seems to me that there are other potential answers beginning with ‘d’.

As I have said in a previous post, the whole question on synonyms is very thorny, and synonyms very seldom have an identical meaning. I think that previous contributors to this course have been assuming that there is some differentiation in their prompt which makes it clear what answer to give, but the average learner can get confused at times.

For example, in level 85, in the tapping test to match English to the German word “rechtzeitig”, the correct option to type is “on time (punctual), in time (to accomplish sth)”. However sometimes a second option of “punctual, on time” is presented (which probably comes from “pünktlich”) and tapping is this answer is judged wrong.

A particularly egregious example is on level 90, with the tapping options to match the German word “der Zweck”. Three options which are very similar are presented, but only one is judged to be correct. See screenshot:

Memrise, 5000 word course, tapping options for 'der Zweck'.png568×739 133 KB

I notice that in the case of some words, when they are first presented some German synonyms are shown directly below the main word, in smaller letters. Can we add synonyms to the course in this way? (However, I don’t think that the synonyms are shown during tests.)

It is useful that some words now have the German synonym in the English alternates column, but it is quite confusing to be told that you’ve typed the word in English when in fact you have typed an alternative German word. I think that it would be a lot better to guide people to enter only the acceptable word, so I am in favour of having additional hints within the prompt - if there is not a more complete solution to the problem.

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I forgot to mention a few other ambiguities:

Level 90, prompt “the judgment”, only acceptable answer is “das Urteil”. I would have expected “das Beurteilung” to be accepted (of for the prompt to indicate “…U_”

I don’t know the level, but for the prompt “correct”, the only accepted answer is “richtig”. I think that “korrekt” should be accepted.

Do the prompt “party (p_)”, only “die Party” is accepted and not “die Partei” (which is prompted else where as “the political party”.

There are others where the prompts do effectively exclude synonyms, but it is a bit confusing to handle. For example, to the prompt “immediately, equally”, only “gleich” is accepted. Reading “immediately”, I start answering “sofort”. There are a lot of cases like this, where a somewhat subjective list of words in the prompt is meant to guide the learner to a particular specific answer, but there is certainly a level of ambiguity.

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I’ve fixed all these and those in your other email, thanks for pointing them out.

Not sure what you mean about other possibilities for ‘derjenige’, but I added diejenige and dasjenige as visible alternatives (which is what you see when you see the smaller words under the headword when it’s first presented).

This course as a rule avoids having too many accepted alternatives for a given word, which I think is sensible unless the words are truly interchangeable (e.g. gern/gerne).

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24

Hi Dylan,

I am not actually doing your course, but am always curious about German courses because I live in Germany and speak the language pretty well (after starting German at school at the age of about 13, I now have a 2:1 degree from university and a diploma in translation). Anyway, I noticed that “disambiguation” is a problem on this course and wondered if I could offer a way to deal with this.

I am a course contributor for four Swedish courses and have had the same problem. What I now try to do is to find a phrase in Swedish (collocation) where only one particular word can be used. I then offer that in the list of translations, but in square brackets and a squiggle for the Swedish word.

An example would be (I’ll use English for the sake of argument) would be “do” vs. “make”, which are often basically synonymous, but NOT in certain collocations:

For “do”, you could add the following example:

“to ~ one’s homework”

In this case ONLY “do” can be used in English and not “make”.

For “make”, I would add something like:

“to ~ a mistake”

because also in this case, “make” is correct, and “do” isn’t.

I hope this idea might help you! If you need help with the German, I might be able to help you or offer you some ideas of phrases. I use an excellent corpus databank for Swedish, but I am not familiar with anything like that for German. I do find the dictionary “dict.cc” has a wide range of collocations, though.

I hope you don’t think I am being presumptuous, I just wanted to pass on this idea, that’s all.

Amanda

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25

There are some phrases and compounds which use “Zweck” that might help here. Here are some examples:

“der Sinn und Zweck der Sache” - the whole point (and purpose) of the thing

“ein Zweckheirat” - a marriage which was made to fulfil a particular function, rather than a love-based relationship.

or there is the Machiavellian phrase “der Zweck heiligt die Mittel” :smile: (the end justifies the means)

or “es ist für einen guten Zweck” - it is for a good cause.

“das hat keinen Zweck” is also a very common phrase.

There are three pages of examples on this site:

https://www.dict.cc/?s=Zweck&pagenum=1

Anyway, hope this helps!

I think I have put this in the wrong place, misxifRM :frowning: Can you put it somewhere else where Dylan will see it?

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Yep, that idea had occurred to me, but I think it requires better familiarity with the language than I have to do so. I guess my general view is that a flash-card course isn’t really going to teach you the subtleties of how and when to use words, but it just a good way to build up a base vocab that is enough to help you read/understand another language and form simple sentences of your own. It obviously needs to be combined with other types of study and language absorption to get anywhere near to having a good “feel” for a language and how to use it naturally.

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I take your point! I have been learning Swedish for about two-and-a-half years now and (because of my German) I am now able to read Swedish novels in the original with not too many problems. I keep notebooks that I use to write down phrases I come across and it was these everyday phrases that gave me the inspiration for ways to disambiguate various words on my Swedish courses.

The other reason for adding these collocations is that it had bugged the pants off ME that I would write down the wrong word :slight_smile: so I started to look for phrases that would help me score better and be less frustrated whilst going through my memrise vocab.

My Swedish is now quite good so I am able to tell when a “synonym” - the course creator allowed way too many - is actually not a synonym at all. So when I remove the synonyms, I always try to make sure that the two words in question are defined in such a way that it is clear that only one word will work.

From what I can see, though, Dylan, you have worked really hard to make sure that the definitions given cover all the basic meanings.

As we say in German these days (but this was not OK when I first came to Germany in 1988 :slight_smile: ):

Du hast echt einen guten Job gemacht!

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28

I just reached level 212 and found that is has no audio, and from previewing later levels it seems that there is next to no audio past this point. What’s the situation there?

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I’m afraid it looks that way.

If someone’s willing to help out with adding audio I’m happy to add them as a contributor.

I’ve generally been downloading audio clips from dict.cc, but it’s a pretty tedious task.

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Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I’d be happy to help with adding audio.

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I use “www.forvo.com” for adding audio to my Swedish courses. It is pretty painless with a Chromebook. A question of maybe five or six clicks in total per word.

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That’s probably all it is for me too but it’s still a nuisance considering in principle it could be automatically scripted.

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The technical stuff would probably be beyond me!

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Hello Dylan, I’ve been collecting a number of points to raise concerning ambiguities or other small issues, to give you a batch at one time to take a look at - if you get the opportunity.

As said before, the question of synonyms/ambiguities is a thorny one, so I have not tried to indicate all the cases where alternative answers could be given. Also, in the cases that I am indicating I may not be the best judge - so please decide for yourself when you make edits or not. I do feel that there is a bias in this course towards academic or technical word usage, and perhaps this needs to be indicated more clearly in the prompts, but in general I think that those who put together the course did a fabulous job.

Personally, I do not like the solution of “accepting” (ie, not rejecting) a synonym but indicating instead to the user that they have entered the English version of the word. I prefer it when the clarification of the answer wanted is given within the prompt. As a learner, I do not think that my learning is slowed down by having prompts which help me towards the answer wanted, but I do think that my learning is distorted a bit when I have to give a particular answer to an ambiguous question (and I learn through repetition exactly what the course writer wants).

Here is my list of points so far. Sorry that I often don’t know the level. I also don’t know how to present this in a readable format, since I have copied this from Excel as 4 columns per entry: Level number; German text; English prompt; issue being raised. [Google spreadsheet link removed - private message me please if you want the link.]

Level n/k der Schluss Conclusion, end, ending, closure, close No definite article “the” in prompt
Level n/k die Nähe Proximity, vicinity, closeness No definite article “the” in prompt
Level n/k der Dummkopf Dumb person, idiot No definite article “the” in prompt
Level n/k der Zufall Coincidence, accident, fluke, chance occurrence No definite article “the” in prompt
Level n/k der Opa the grandpa Perhaps should indicate that “der Großvater” is not acceptable, or indicate that colloquial version is wanted
Level 85 rechtzeitig on time (punctual), in time (to accomplish something) Prompt for “punktlich” is too close: “punctual, on time” . This is sometimes displayed in tapping options, but not accepted
Level 87 geraten to turn out (‘g~’) Description ambiguous, apart from 'g’
Level 90 der Zweck the purpose, aim objective, intention Ambiguity with “Absicht” and “Ziel”?
Level 90 das Urteil the judgment Ambiguity with “die Beurteilung”?
Level n/k gleich immediately, equally Giving “immediately” as the first word in the prompt risks confusion with "sofort"
Level n/k richtig correct Ambiguity with “korrekt”?
Level n/k die Party party (p_) Ambiguity with "die Partei"
Level n/k der Käse the cheese Indicates no plural, but one of several cases where plurals are possible (as in translation of “the cheeses”)
Level n/k der Fisch the fish Same issue as with Käse - plurals are possible in a certain context
Level n/k der September September No definite article “the” in prompt
Level n/k wenden to turn (‘drehen’ or …) Ambiguity with “abbiegen”?
Level n/k der Juli the July Almost duplicate of "Juli"
Level n/k Juli July Almost duplicate of “der Juli”. There are several cases of both versions of months.
Level n/k das Konto; -s the account [not sure of exact prompt] Almost duplicate of "das Konto, die Konten"
Level n/k das Konto, die Konten the account [not sure of exact prompt] Almost duplicate of “das Konto; -s”. Can we handle alternative plurals in a different way?
Level 98 unterstützen to support Not sure, but this may be a duplicate of entry in another level
Level 98 bewaffnen to arm Ambiguity with “aufrüsten” etc?
Level 99 pünktlich punctual, on time Ambiguity in prompt, see “rechtzeitig” above (level 85)
Level 99 august august If this is meant to be the adjective “august” (in English), then the translation is bad. [“der August” is given as well]
Level 101 schieben to push Ambiguity with “drücken” and “drängen”? Even possible “stoßen”?
Level 104 der Bart; "-e the beard Miswritten plural indication in the German version (should be -"e) - dash and double apostrophe are interchanged
Level 105 höchstens at most Is there ambiguity due to other translations of “at most”, such as “allenfalls” or “bestenfalls”?
Level 105 der Gewinn the gain Ambiguity with “der Ertrag”?
Level n/k das Personal the personnel [not sure of exact prompt] Audio file appears incorrect
Level n/k je each Answer “jeder” is rejected, but prompt does not indicate adverb is required
Level n/k das Jubiläum; - die Jubiläen the Jubilee [not sure of exact prompt] The hyphen should be removed from the German text, so that the plural test works properly
Level n/k die Sekunde the second This is given as two separate words (a close duplicate), one with plural and one without
Level n/k der Trainer the coach Ambiguity with possible translations of the English, such as to “Resiebus” or “Kutsche” (since prompt does not indicate that it is a sports trainer)?
Level n/k ersparen to save, to spare Ambiguity with “sparen”?
Level n/k der Satz the sentence Ambiguity with other transalations of the English, such as to “die Strafe” or “das Urteil” (ie, a legal sentence)?
Level n/k rasen to race Ambiguity with “retten”?
Level 131 meist most Duplicate - twice in the same level
Level n/k vorhaben to intend, to mean, to plan (planen, …, vorsehen) Ambiguity with “beabsichtigen”?
Level 136 der Schwager the brother-in-law No plural given.
Level 136 das Gemüse the vegetables (no plural) Questionable to say that there is no plural.
Level 141 aussuchen to choose, pick, pick out Ambiguity with “auswählen”?
Level 142 die Branche the branch Ambiguity since it doesn’t indicate that this is a commercial branch? (If not, “der Zweig”?)
Level 147 das Tuch; -e cloth, scarf, blanket, towel Should -"er (ie, "die Tücher) also be accepted as a plural?
Level 152 die Lehre the apprenticeship Ambiguity with “die Ausbildung”?
Level 154 das Kennzeichen the label, the distinguishing mark Appears to be a special-case translation of “the label”. What about “die Bezeichnung” or “das Etikett”?
Level 159 der Vorname; -ns; -n the first name, given name Mis-type in plural: “-ns” instead of “-n”.
Level 160 erraten to guess (‘e_’) Ambiguity with “erahnen”?
Level 166 der Geiger the violinist Duplicate, repeated from previous level (Level 165), although with slightly different prompt
Level n/k die Ausrede the excuse Ambiguity with “die Entschuldigung”?
Level n/k ermorden to murder Ambiguity with “morden”?
Level n/k aufstellen to deploy Ambiguity with “anwenden”?
Level 182 der Kopfhörer the headphone No plural indicated. (It does not indicate the the plural is the same as the singular.)
Level 182 der Oberst the colonel No plural indicated. Should it be “; -en”?

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You’d sent me nearly all of those before, I started through the list and had already fixed them…not sure which ones are new.

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36

I can’t find any entry for das Konto/die Konten? Both Konten and Kontos are valid plurals of the same word anyway.

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37

Hello Dylan,

I’m very sorry to have sent you duplicates of my earlier comments. I had not included ones that I thought that I had sent you before, but I was not careful enough about this. The great majority of the ones listed I had not previously mentioned.

Would you like me to go through the spreadsheet to mark which ones I had already told you about? Now I have this better organised, I should avoid repeating the problem.

Your edits to the database are very much appreciated, so if there is any way I can make my notes easier to you, please let me know.

Thanks,
Robert

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My notes and my recollection are that there was effectively a duplicate entry for “das Konto”, in the form “das Konto; die Konten”, but I also cannot see it now. I think that you have now changed the entry on level 97, so that it reads “das Konto; -s (oder Konten)”.

Thanks!

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Yes, I did that, but I couldn’t find a duplicate.

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40

The first 8 or so I’d already fixed, so maybe if you can double check the others.

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