As if to reinforce my decision to ditch the owl, I had a particularly frustrating #Duolingo session this afternoon. Its just not fun anymore.
Kinda want to keep my streak though. 🤔
One of my many gripes about #Duolingo is that it does not tell you why you are wrong. Sometimes it’s obvious, but sometimes it is not.
For example: How am I suppose to know when his meeting was. I’m sure the form of “last” is the clue, but heck if I know what that clue is and how to avoid the mistake in the future.
Reading through this book is fascinating. One paragraph I’ll understand almost everything, and the next I’ll understand almost nothing.
It’s good to see that the vocab I picked up from the owl is helping a bit at least.
@EddiKat You're correct that "last" is the clue - there's only one word that fits the grammar here. "Letzten" only goes with a masculine noun, so:
Ich hatte letzten Freitag (masculine: der Freitag) ein Treffen.
Ich hatte letzte Woche (feminine: die Woche) ein Treffen.
Ich hatte letztes Wochenende (neuter: das Wochenende) ein Treffen.
But I completely agree that kind of question can be frustrating because it requires a level of intuition that you probably don't have yet as a learner.
@kianga I was about to explain it too, but saw your comment just in time before embarrassing myself.
@EddiKat Native speaker here. If you have any questions, just ask. I am always pleased to help.
I share your oppinion on Duolingo and their lack of explaination. I would like to see an accompanying e-book for every language course, which primarily teaches grammar. In my opinion that falls short.
@pesti @kianga Thanks to both of you! I love the helpful creatures I find here on the #Fediverse.
Duolingo is pretty decent for teaching vocab, but falls very short on the grammar side. Like I am aware of gendered nouns of course, but it never tells you the gender of a noun or why the words that go around them conjugate the way they do.
For example, I had no idea that days of the week, weeks, or weekend were even gendered! Much less why there were three forms of "last." It was never mentioned, much less explained.
@EddiKat Duolingo used to have a discussion forum where you could look up things like this. Usually someone else would have already asked the same thing, so the answer was waiting for you.
Nowadays it doesn't - your best bets for quick help in the future (other than asking here) are asking AI (like ChatGPT or Bard) which are awesome explaining the errors plus giving you other other ways of saying the same thing as well as asking in Reddit's duolingo area.
Have fun learning German.
EddiKat
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