I've been making a linguistics puzzle game where you decipher a language (which happens to be German) using shared etymology, shared cultural knowledge and pattern matching.
-
@michelleful@scicomm.xyz As a German, I can't tell how well it works, as it's clearly too obvious to me at first. If I could skip to the end, I could maybe better see how well it works, but indeed, it doesn't surprise me at all, as the languages are kinda close, especially when including English anachronisms like "thou" and even "hast".
Also, virtually every English verb ending in "-ate" is actually a Latin verb ending in "-are" in its infinitive, and often common with German where the suffix usually becomes "-ieren". As such, you can immediately translate words like "instigieren", "dehydrieren", "aktivieren". For some words the translation to English is a bit more complex such, as "akzeptieren", "alkoholisieren", "subtrahieren" (which, of course, is "subtrahere" in Latin, which shows that the German "-ieren" is ambiguous about its origin, and even can occur entirely non Latin related, like in "verschmieren" or "den Haustieren").@divVerent Thank you! I'm not sure about the "how well it works" either, but teaching German isn't the main goal, it's to have fun exploring a new language without needing to memorise a lot of words and having a bunch of little epiphanies along the way
Thanks for the -ieren examples, I should definitely include some of those cognates in a future level! -
@michelleful
The Coleridge puzzle bugged me because of course I quote it "nor any drop to drink" - that's how he wrote it! Is it common to misquote it like that?! Not big deal at all, just a minor annoyance for me, personally.
@pentup Ah yeah, I was looking for a more direct translation of the German I had there, and I think that's how most English speakers quote it! I might say "Translate word by word" or something like that and be less snarky about how no one says "nor any", because clearly someone does!
-
@pentup You're probably right there that people might think that there'll be a leaderboard for competitive. I was just looking for a C word that fit in between haha. Maybe "classic"? I will wait for more feedback before changing it but thank you for flagging it!
@michelleful @pentup
Maybe challenging?Well, in fact it was easy for me. Got
points! -
I've been making a linguistics puzzle game where you decipher a language (which happens to be German) using shared etymology, shared cultural knowledge and pattern matching.
It's called German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy and the first five levels are up! No German knowledge necessary, and feedback is very welcome.
German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy
Personal website for Michelle Fullwood, NLP scientist and linguistic tinkerer. Language tools, maps, miscellany.
(michellefullwood.com)
#etymology #linguistics #puzzles #LearnGerman
@michelleful@scicomm.xyz Finished the first two levels instead of going to sleep.
It's really well-thought and engaging. It makes language look like a puzzle you can rebuild bit by bit, hope you keep working on it! -
I've been making a linguistics puzzle game where you decipher a language (which happens to be German) using shared etymology, shared cultural knowledge and pattern matching.
It's called German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy and the first five levels are up! No German knowledge necessary, and feedback is very welcome.
German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy
Personal website for Michelle Fullwood, NLP scientist and linguistic tinkerer. Language tools, maps, miscellany.
(michellefullwood.com)
#etymology #linguistics #puzzles #LearnGerman
@michelleful Great fun and really good stuff - just bounced a bit off the use of 'workweek' which I now understand to be a common Americanism but have only rarely come across before (UK here). Will bear in mind that we are using strictly American English from here on in, but...
-
I've been making a linguistics puzzle game where you decipher a language (which happens to be German) using shared etymology, shared cultural knowledge and pattern matching.
It's called German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy and the first five levels are up! No German knowledge necessary, and feedback is very welcome.
German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy
Personal website for Michelle Fullwood, NLP scientist and linguistic tinkerer. Language tools, maps, miscellany.
(michellefullwood.com)
#etymology #linguistics #puzzles #LearnGerman
@michelleful I played through level 1 and enjoyed it!
-
@michelleful Great fun and really good stuff - just bounced a bit off the use of 'workweek' which I now understand to be a common Americanism but have only rarely come across before (UK here). Will bear in mind that we are using strictly American English from here on in, but...
@conniptions Interesting! Do you use the term "working week" instead? If it's any consolation I accept British and American spelling! If they have a different number of blanks that's a bit harder to support though...
-
@michelleful @pentup
Maybe challenging?Well, in fact it was easy for me. Got
points!@Ruhrnalist @pentup Excellent!! The 3rd mode, which has zero hints, even free ones (except for "next letter please") is currently the "challenging" mode
-
@conniptions Interesting! Do you use the term "working week" instead? If it's any consolation I accept British and American spelling! If they have a different number of blanks that's a bit harder to support though...
@michelleful Yes, 'working week' would be more of a thing, though not a common usage really. 'Workweek' is an interesting Americanism in that it is both highly obscure (to me at least) yet immediately and unambiguously intelligible, once given, and ofc tough to fill in a blank with if you've never heard of it. Contrast 'pants' or 'sidewalk' which are widely known Americanisms outside the US, yet both highly ambiguous and essentially unparseable without prior knowledge.
-
@conniptions Interesting! Do you use the term "working week" instead? If it's any consolation I accept British and American spelling! If they have a different number of blanks that's a bit harder to support though...
@michelleful There's an argument to say accepting only American spelling would be better if terms like 'workweek' are being used. But this could all be just me demonstrating the limitations of my own personal vocabulary; perhaps 'workweek' is not after all as obscure round these parts as I think? I don't work for the OED or anything
Am tempted to run a poll tomorrow when the rest of the UK is awake. -
@michelleful There's an argument to say accepting only American spelling would be better if terms like 'workweek' are being used. But this could all be just me demonstrating the limitations of my own personal vocabulary; perhaps 'workweek' is not after all as obscure round these parts as I think? I don't work for the OED or anything
Am tempted to run a poll tomorrow when the rest of the UK is awake.@conniptions please do and let me know the results!!
I am definitely going to continue accepting the British spelling, if only because I am someone who both uses it (coming from Singapore) and uses the word "workweek" (for whatever reason, I don't feel like it's ever not been in my vocabulary).
-
@michelleful@scicomm.xyz Finished the first two levels instead of going to sleep.
It's really well-thought and engaging. It makes language look like a puzzle you can rebuild bit by bit, hope you keep working on it!@larozeppeli thank you!! This is what I was aiming for!
-
@Sharonybaloney if you tap on a word (e.g. ich) and then the first blank, does it move?
@michelleful oh, wow! I thought I tapped it every possible way. But that worked. I figured it was a me problem, but I’m glad I said something because I was curious to see where it was going as the difficulty ramped up. Thanks.
-
I've been making a linguistics puzzle game where you decipher a language (which happens to be German) using shared etymology, shared cultural knowledge and pattern matching.
It's called German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy and the first five levels are up! No German knowledge necessary, and feedback is very welcome.
German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy
Personal website for Michelle Fullwood, NLP scientist and linguistic tinkerer. Language tools, maps, miscellany.
(michellefullwood.com)
#etymology #linguistics #puzzles #LearnGerman
Poké @LeoApwal
-
I've been making a linguistics puzzle game where you decipher a language (which happens to be German) using shared etymology, shared cultural knowledge and pattern matching.
It's called German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy and the first five levels are up! No German knowledge necessary, and feedback is very welcome.
German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy
Personal website for Michelle Fullwood, NLP scientist and linguistic tinkerer. Language tools, maps, miscellany.
(michellefullwood.com)
#etymology #linguistics #puzzles #LearnGerman
@michelleful French speaker here, learned English and German at school, this is a fun three languages exercise.
-
@Oelnbod you need to put another noun in the first positions! Click on the current noun to return and try a different one! Same for both clauses.
@michelleful @Oelnbod I got stuck there for a minute too. I think it would help to have a sentence like “the subject isn’t always in first position” on that screen.
I finished the first level and I liked it
-
@michelleful
For the "I drank beer" puzzle, the explanation talks about why "have" gets moved to the second slot, but that doesn't seem like what happened to me. I feel like "I have drunk beer" would be the English order of those words (not "I beer have drunk"), so the weirdness to me is that in German "drunk" comes after "beer", not that "have" comes before "beer".@michelleful It took me a minute to figure out why I couldn't type anything here!
-
@rubyjones you need to put another noun in the first positions! Click on the current noun to return and try a different one! Same for both clauses
@michelleful Ah, OK, thank you. I think some kind of visual feedback would help here, as the tiles are showing green, so it looks like it's correct. I also found it difficult to swap the nouns out, as I had tried that before and it seemed like it wouldn't let me. I tried a few more times after you said and eventually got it to work, but that might be something to look at.
-
I've been making a linguistics puzzle game where you decipher a language (which happens to be German) using shared etymology, shared cultural knowledge and pattern matching.
It's called German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy and the first five levels are up! No German knowledge necessary, and feedback is very welcome.
German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy
Personal website for Michelle Fullwood, NLP scientist and linguistic tinkerer. Language tools, maps, miscellany.
(michellefullwood.com)
#etymology #linguistics #puzzles #LearnGerman
@michelleful this is fun!
I speak both languages, and I love the explanations!
️
-
I've been making a linguistics puzzle game where you decipher a language (which happens to be German) using shared etymology, shared cultural knowledge and pattern matching.
It's called German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy and the first five levels are up! No German knowledge necessary, and feedback is very welcome.
German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy
Personal website for Michelle Fullwood, NLP scientist and linguistic tinkerer. Language tools, maps, miscellany.
(michellefullwood.com)
#etymology #linguistics #puzzles #LearnGerman
@michelleful @jimbob Any plans to expand this to other languages?
