[Course Forum] German 1-7 by Memrise

Hello everyone!
In German 1, level 9:

der Deutsche; die Deutsche == the German (man; woman)

bist du Deutscher? == are you German?

Can anyone explain to me why we said “deutscher” in the second sentence?

danke!

because it is a “nominalisiertes Adjektiv”, that is it is an adjective which gave the noun “der Deutsche”; even as noun continues to behave like an adjective (imagine “Mann” always after it). Der Deutsche is not like other nationality nouns ending in -e, which are of “-n Deklination” (der Schwede, des Schweden, ein Schwede)

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It’s a little bit tricky, but I think that I start to understand. Thanks!

Also, it seems that the question “bist du Deutscher” applies to men, but if we want to ask a woman we say “bist du Deutsche?” ?

@mario2189, I think that a little explanation (or adding more sentences) in that level would be useful.

Ty for your reply.

ty for moving the question/complaint!
regards,
Patrick.

Thank you very much for your reply.
You make a lot of sense and I think I will just try higher courses.
If it is too much I can always drop down.
Best regards,
Patrick

Hi @mila83,

Yes, “bist du Deutscher?” applies to men here, and “bist du Deutsche?” would be applied to women. We will regard it for future changes, so thanks for mentioning it!

Best wishes,
Linh

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In German 2, level 14, why is “das Krankenhaus” “a hospital”, rather than “the hospital”?

Hi @Moutmoutosaure,

“das Krankenhaus” is now “the hospital”, thanks for noticing! You might have to log in and out to see the changes, but it should be correct now. Thank you and happy learning! Best, Linh

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Hi @linh.vu
in German 1, level 12, there are two adjectives to say “nice”:
schön = beautiful; nice
nett = nice

in level 13:
sie ist nett = she’s nice
das ist schön = that’s nice

Can I say: “sie ist schön”, and “das ist nett”?

Danke!

Hi @mila83,

Yes, you can use “sie ist schön” (she is beautiful) and “das ist nett”. You can use the latter for example to say “das ist nett von dir” (that is nice of you) as well. In “sie ist nett”, “nett” can also mean friendly. Happy learning! Best, Linh

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In the “German 6 - Sports: on screen” course, “turn off” is “abschalten”. So could you say “schalte den Fernseher ab”, or do you have to say “schalte den Fernseher aus”?

Hi @Moutmoutosaure,
Good question! “Abschalten” and “ausschalten” both mean turn off. However, “abschalten” is usually used when you completely take something off the electrical grid, while “ausschalten” is more simply switching things off (TV, phone, light etc.). For example, you would use “das Atomkraftwerk abschalten” (turn off the nuclear plant), or “den Strom abschalten” (turn of electricity, for example to install new electric appliances). We also have the idiom “einfach mal abschalten”, meaning “simply relax/ just lay back”.

Long story short, if you turn of the TV with the remote control or the turn-off button, it should be “schalte den Fernseher aus”. Hope this helps! Best, Linh

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@mario2189 Has a change been made to the lessons within the last three days? When I was was doing my review of German 1 and 2, and doing my new exercises in German 2 today, I noticed that the German sentence choices in the exercises (where we are given a sentence in English and then have to click on three green circles numbered 1 to 3 to find the correct German translation) where not all sentences we had been learning, like before. Two out of the three sentence were sentences not taught yet and one sentence was the correct answer. This was the case with all the exercises of that type that I did today. If it is a new change, I think you should go back to the old way where all the sentence are ones from the current lesson. That way, our learning is reinforced AND we don’t just choose as the correct answer the ONLY sentence we have ever heard before, which also happens to be the only sentence we beginners can understand.

Good point!

Hi there and thanks for getting in touch! Our new German Language Specialist @linh.vu will take a look very soon!
Cheers,
Mario

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Hi @benton.1,

Thank you for your feedback and sorry for the confusion. In audio multiple choice tasks, the correct answer is not always embedded with other items that you have already learned, but with items from our teaching material that are similar to it. Especially when you only started learning sentences, it might not always be practical to choose distractors from the pool of already learned words, because distinguishing between items that sound vastly different might be too easy.

You definitely have a point nevertheless. Our team is already looking into improving the choice of distractors, so thank you again for the feedback! Happy learning! Best, Linh

In German 6 Lvl 12 “leise” is “quiet” but I also keep getting “quiet” with an answer of “still” from a previous lesson. “Still” and “leise” are not interchangeable answers like other synonyms I have seen in previous lessons, so I often choose the wrong answer since there is no distinction in the hint: just “quiet.” Can we get both “leise” and “still” to be correct answers for “quiet”?

@linh.vu Hi Lihn, My question was “has something changed in the last few days?”. I’ve been doing Memrise Spanish for close to a year and German for about two months. Yesterday, I noticed that the “distractors” in the lessons I had been working on in German had changed. The distractors had been sentences we were working on in the lessons. Now, they are completely new sentences with vocabulary we’ve never had before. Did someone changed the distractors in the lessons?

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Hi @ghill333,

Thanks for noticing, I know have added “still” and “leise” to be alternative answers for both terms respectively for each other. Once you logged out and in, you should be able to use both answers for “quiet”.

@benton.1, mh, no one has changed the distractors. For every item, we always have multiple distractors available. It is a long stretch, but maybe the distractors you previously encountered have happened to be similar to the correct answer and to be items you’ve already learnt and were thus shown? In any case, we haven’t changed the distractors and they are designed to be similar to the correct answers and not to be items previously learnt. I hope this clarifies the issue!

Best, Linh