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

Community-Created Courses German
85

Also, in level 159 there is der Vorname; -n, -n. This should be der Vorname; -ns, -n, because Vorname is one of the weak masculine nouns that keeps the the -s ending in the genitive singular, i.e, des Vornamens. Duden

The same applies to der Friede, der Wille, der Glaube, der Buchstabe, der Gedanke, and of course der Name. Just to add to the fun, der Glaube has no plural form, so I suppose one could write it ***der Glaube; -ns, -***.

In addition, I’ve noticed quite a lot of the ‘regular’ weak nouns are missing the two -n endings, for example der Bulle; -n rather than der Bulle; -n, -n. The same applies to der Soldat and der Löwe. I’ve not been keeping a list, but these are ones I reviewed recently and have stuck in my mind.

Here and…

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86

…here and here are some extra resources for information about weak nouns.

Sorry for dumping a load of information on you at once; I’ve never ventured over to the forums before and as I started writing, more stuff came to mind. The old system, where there was a report button within the learning window, was far superior!

87

Thanks for that (and other info), I didn’t know that about adjectival nouns and couldn’t quite work out why sometimes you’d see them with the -r and others without, but that they decline like adjectives makes sense. The question is whether and how we should indicate this in the course, as it’s not obvious from the -e ending alone that a word is adjectival noun or not. I know in dict.cc it lists it as der Beauftragte / ein Beauftragter - I suppose we could do that, but then the English clue would technically need to be “the/a commissioner, appointee, etc.”

88

I gathered the first suffix when there are two was meant to indicate the accusative/dative ending, and the second the plural.

So I think if the genitive is different again that would mean 3rd suffixes are needed, e.g. Vorname; -ns, -n, -n

?

But actually just reading up about N-declension nouns it seems that you’re better learning the general pattern behind such nouns rather than trying to remember sets of suffixes for each word. While there are some exceptions (e.g. der Käse is the only common masculine noun ending in -e that isn’t an N-declension noun) it seems it’s fairly easy just to get a feel for which nouns are N-declension by their nominative endings and meanings, so maybe there’s no real need for this course to distinguish them at all…

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89

I think they should be marked as, for example, der Beauftragte; -n as this fits the current format of entries and nothing has to be removed before adding the plural ending.

Maybe (ein Beauftragter) could be added as an alternate answer or added in parenthesis so that people can enter it if they want to, but it’s not mandatory.

I think adjectival nouns are moving into the realms of advanced grammar and I don’t think the course itself is necessarily the best place to try and explain how they work. If people are curious about why the endings are different, they can come to the forums or do a bit of googling and then they can get the answers they need. If they don’t care at the moment and just want to learn a lot of German words, then that’s fine too.

However, I think it is important to mark them out somehow as adjectival nouns, so that people who do want to be as grammatically accurate as possible can be.

90

As far as I am aware, the dative and accusative endings are always the same; they are the same as the nominative unless it’s a weak noun when they match the genitive unless it’s one of the weak nouns with the -ns genitive endings, but they remain the same as each other. (yay for grammar!)

It is a convention that the first ending is genitive and the second ending is plural, just usually the genitive endings are so regular and predictable that it’s not necessary to include them in the course.

If you go to a German dictionary, that’s the standard format they will follow.

Opening a random page in my dictionary, the first three entries are

Peitsche < - , -n > f
Pekinese < -n, -n > m
Pelikan < -s, -e > m

That tells us that die Peitsche becomes der Peitsche in the singular genitive and die Peitschen in the plural. So, in our memrise course we could write die Peitsche; - , -n, but that no ending is perfectly regular for a feminine noun, so it seems extraneous to include it. The same with der Pelikan; it is perfectly regular for it to be des Pelikans in the genitive singular.

But der Pekinese becomes des Pekinesen and that’s pretty unusual, and a pretty important grammar point, so it’s worth including in our format for the course.

You can argue that if it’s masculine and ends in an -e and is not Käse then it’s weak and people should just remember that, but I feel it’s not really that demanding to type der Pekinese, -n, -n instead of der Pekinese, -n. It’s a really succint way to include a reminder of an important grammar point. It could even be in parenthesis if people really don’t want to type it in.

There are also those even more irregular weak nouns like Buchstabe, Name, etc. with the -ns genitive ending and I think it is important to include those. It may be my own personal bias here, but I found it very useful when going through one of these 5000 courses to be reminded of the -ns irregularity.

I think it would be wrong not to include it, especially since it can be done so easily. If it’s not something you particularly want to do, then I’ll volunteer as tribute. :stuck_out_tongue:

91

I could just use the “part of speech” for that, but it tends to be something you don’t really notice while reviewing.

92

Hey Dylan,

I just started this course and am having trouble with Level 2 anderer, andere, anderes other, different (m,f,n). the only correct answer it will take is anderer, andere, anderes not any of them individually.

Thanks for the help…
Holff

93

Hello Holff,

I think that you are studying a different course, and not the one covered by this forum.

You seem to be studying the course: http://www.memrise.com/course/920/5000-german-words-top-87/

This forum is dealing with the course: http://www.memrise.com/course/47049/5000-words-top-87-sorted-by-frequency/

Superficially the courses are similar, and they have similar names, but the two courses are maintained completely independently from each other.

I’m sorry that we cannot help you with your problem in this forum.

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94

Holff, the forum that you want for the course you are studying is at: [Course Forum] 5000 German Words (Top 87%) by Paul_Wilson (maintained by EHurtt)

95

That for the help. :slight_smile:

96

As others have pointed out, not an issue with this course, but anyway, why should it? The clue tells you need to provide masculine, feminine and neuter…

97

Actually the clue does not tell me I need to provide all three, it simply shows all three and labels them m,f,n. Nowhere in the instructions for the course does it explain that some words with parentheses require all three examples. You act like it is common knowledge but browsing through levels up to 50, I didn’t see another word like this and this is the first course I have seen that does that in the first place. Anyway, thanks for the ‘help’…

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98

When having to choose the word meaning “prison”, there’s sometimes both a “das Gefängnis, -se” & a “das Gefängnis; -se”. One of the is incorrect, but I don’t remember which one.

99

Hello HerczegJ,

Thanks for reporting this issue, although there is no entry das Gefängnis, -se in the course covered by this forum There is the entry das Gefängnis; -se (with a semi-colon) on level 32.

I think that the issue you are referring to is when Memrise presents multiple options in a ‘tapping test’. I think that Memrise picks these options not just from the list of entries in the course but also from entries in an underlying (invisible) database - perhaps the one they call ‘Standard German’. This database may include previous entries which were later amended or deleted.

I am have come across several examples of this confusing behaviour, where non-valid options are presented. I don’t believe that contributors managing the course can do anything about this.

In the case of this course, the separators are now all semi-colons and not commas. If you see an option with a comma as the separator between a noun and the plural indication, this option should not be chosen.

100

Gefängnis with a comma isn’t in the course database either, but yeah there appears to be some other list/db somewhere that contains older entries that gets used to populate the multiple-choice options.
Anyway any answer with a comma separating the terms is not the intended answer in this course, so you can safely ignore it.

101

Dylan,
What is the source for the list of 5000 German words?

Perhaps: “Frequency Dictionary of German: Core Vocabulary of Learners” ?

Thank you.

102

It’s a mixture of sources now, I can’t remember what it was originally, but there were a lot of words in there that shouldn’t have been and lots missing that should have. We still have a list of at least 100 words we intend to add at some point but don’t have a good method of doing so, as they need to be inserted among the first 100 levels.

103

Hi Dylan,

First of all, thank you so much for designing and maintaining this course. Clearly a lot of us are profiting from your generous work.

I’ve noticed that nouns are presented in their singular and plural form. Usually to be marked correct it is only necessary to provide the singular form. For instance in Level 57, “The Stone” requires the entry “der Stein” and nothing more to be marked correct. Also in Level 57, however, is “The Lie.” If you plug in “die Luge” it will mark you incorrect; you need to enter the plural ending as well “die Luge; -n” to be marked correct.

I’ve noticed that there are 20 or so instances of this in the first 1,100 words. Can you speak to this at all? Is this something that can be adjusted, or is there some rationale as to why these particular words require the plural entry in order to be marked correct?

Thanks!

104

Nevermind, I figured out the issue. Interesting glitch on Memrise’s part. When providing answers with umlauts, Memrise usually won’t mark you wrong for typing the letter without the umlaut, except for some reason, with nouns. So, for example if the word is Tired, Memrise will accept “mude” even though strictly speaking the correct answer is “müde”

But if the word is the Trouble or Toil, Memrise will not accept “die Muhe.” It will accept either “die Mühe” or if you omit the umlaut it will accept “die Muhe; -n”

Very strange.

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