A Renewed Interest In German


Posted on 05 October 2019 in german-minimal-pairs





I studied German in high school, and I studied German in college. I was a good student, and made a serious effort, but very little stuck. I cannot hold a basic German conversation to save my life.

Recently, I’ve felt the itch to try learning German again, and hoping to avoid some of the mistakes I made the first time, I bought myself a copy of Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner. His book emphasizes mastering pronunciation and good hearing first, before learning grammar and diction. His suggestion is to study minimal pairs, so using some audio I found on Rhino Speak, I’ve decided to make a web app that will randomly play audio clips from paired sets, forcing me to guess which word is being said. Is the speaker saying ‘wischt’ or ‘Wicht’? I’ll have to practice listening to know, as that particular ch sound isn’t native to English. Building it as a web app will let me practice on the train to and from work, time which I otherwise often waste.

Orbiting the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange Point

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