Learning German from DuoLingo: Day 127 - Dative prepositions and Parts of the Body

Today was my 127^th consecutive day working with DuoLingo to learn to read the German language. This post describes activities over the last seven days, during which time I completed the "Dative Preposition" category and moved on to "Body 1".

As mentioned in a previous post, I began the "Dative Preposition" category on day 120. After that, I completed roughly a level per day, and finished the category two days ago. Additionally, for the last several days, I have started seeing previously finished categories decaying again at a rate of 3 per day. Yesterday and today, I advanced through levels 1 and 2 of the "Body 1" category.

Although the category is called, Body 1, the "Tips" section also includes information about other topics, too. It starts off by giving rules for word ordering with dative and accusative case when giving or showing something to someone. In particular, it offers these guidelines:

1. If both objects are Nouns, put the someone first. (i.e. Ich gebe einem Mädchen das Spielzeug. I give a girl the toy.)
2. If both objects are Pronouns, put the something first. (i.e. Ich gebe es ihnen. I give it to them.)
3. If objects include a Noun and a Pronoun, put the Pronoun first.

• Ich zeige ihr eine Zeitung (I show her a newspaper)
• Ich gebe es dem Jungen (I give it to the boy.)

After that, it moves on to introduce the verb, drücken, to press, pinch, squeeze, or hug. This verb is used in many of the body parts lessons.

Here are some examples from the lessons:

German	English
Nicht drücken	Do not push
Der Köpf	the head
Die Köpfe	the heads
Der Korper	the body
Die Körper	the bodies
Der Finger	the finger
Die Finger	the fingers
Die Hand	the hand
Die Hände	the hands
Das Auge	the eye
Die Augen	the eyes
Das Ohr	the ear
Die Ohren	the ears
Der Hals	the neck
Die Hälse	the necks
Der Rücken	the back
Die Haut	the skin
Das Blut	the blood
Auge um Auge	An eye for an eye
Er und ich, wir haben zwei Köpfe.	He and I, we have two heads.
Ich habe nur neun Finger	I only have nine fingers.
Sie drückt mir die Hand.	She squeezes my hand.
Das Insekt hat keinen Hals.	The insect does not have a neck.
Die Spinne hat acht Beine	The spider has eight legs.

I actually learned Kopf as a kid, when my grandfather taught me some off-color words that he had learned while serving as a POW in a German camp during WWII. One of those words was sh%@!kopf.

In addition to completing those lessons in new categories, I completed exercises in previously finished categories in order to restore them after they decayed away from completion, or to replenish my hearts ("lives") after mistakes.

Finally, here are my current numbers:

• Streak: 127
• Hearts: 4
• League: Diamond (league finished for the week)
• Total XP: 19735
• XP in league: 0
• XP today: 172
• Crowns: 179
• Place in league: finished last week at 16. Not starting a new league until tomorrow.
• Followers: 4
• Words learned: 658 in application, 844 on web site

There were no new special characters in today's post, so the full table (so far) still looks like this:

Key press	character
ALT-0196	Ä
ALT-0214	Ö
ALT-0223	ß
ALT-0228	ä
ALT-0246	ö
ALT-0252	ü

If you want to learn a foreign language (or Klingon or High Valyrian), my recommendation for DuoLingo continues to be "thumbs up". According to the app, you can also use DuoLingo to learn dead or endangered languages like Latin, Navajo or Hawaiian.

My guess is that no one is going to learn to speak a language perfectly through DuoLingo, but I think it can provide a solid foundation that can be used to build additional knowledge through other, immersive techniques.