I was advised to port my discussion over to this forum, so I’ll do so.
I have been working my way through two Esperanto courses (http://www.memrise.com/course/1105/speak-esperanto-like-a-nativetm-1/ and http://www.memrise.com/course/1106/speak-esperanto-like-a-nativetm-2/) which have some inherent flaws with pronunciation and orthography. In terms of pronunciation, all of the audio files use what appears to be an American English text-to-speech voice, which is not compatible with Esperanto pronunciation rules. I would like to work through and update these, with advice from other Esperantists. In terms of orthography, mainstream operating systems like Windows and Mac OS don’t natively allow Esperanto characters to be typed through keyboard input methods, but there is a workaround for this in common Esperanto, whereby one can place an ‘h’ or an ‘x’ after the letter one wishes to accent in place of the circumflex. This course does not allow this method even as an alternative spelling option, so I’d like to update this also.
The problem is that the course creator has since deleted his profile, so I am unable to contact him with these issues or request to be a contributor, which is a shame because it is such a useful course. I was asked to tag @Lien and @memrisematty in this post for assistance in becoming a contributor or reaching whoever is currently a contributor to the course, if there is one.
Hi Lien,
I have been away from Memrise for quite some time, as I have spent more time in furthering my knowledge of Esperanto through various sources. For now, I will join you and therefore mecdumonde and wonder to what extent I could assist here as well. One thing I need to know first: How can I ‘travel’ to this thread and specific course forums from my original login page. I cannot now see any link in respect of any courses that I am a contributor to that could lead me to the specific course forums. I reckon that I should be able to.
Hello Mecdumonde, I have just made you a contributor to the course in question. Due to a long absence, I have lost track of the changes that have taken place in relation to course forums etc. The issue with using the X method has come up in the past and the general opinion was that one can make use of the Esperanto letters that have been provided by the original author. There are students that argue that this method slows them down a bit but my standard response will be: Are you partaking in this course to score points or do you really want to learn the language (in this case Esperanto) itself? Anyway, I appreciate your observations and if we could work together in this that would be great. As an aside, whilst Memrise uses a good method to learn the words, grammar is not being touched upon. It is one thing to know words, it is an entirely different thing to be able to write sentences and make proper use of the Esperanto grammar. I know that my observation here is not necessarily relevant to your original question but I just felt like touching upon this issue. My first step now has been to make you a contributor to this course as well as stated above.
Hi Lien,
Meanwhile alanh has shown me where the link to the forums is which is at the bottom of the webpage. However, how does one return to the course after having visited for instance the Course Creator’s Corner?
It is very good to know that it is still possible to contribute to the course even with its creator deleted!
I agree that some recordings are of low quality, while it’s not the pronounciation but background noises that bother me. I would like to contribute by re-recording some of the words. How do I share my recording with you? Is there any place to coordinate, like a chat (Slack, IRC), Google group or anyting?
I’m also doing this Speak Like a Native 1 Esperanto course and find that there are too many words to learn on their own and need to practice sentences like just what we might use in a typical conversation. The course was fine for the two weeks of doing Esperanto but now need practice stringing sentences together and using the words I’ve learned.
Does anyone know any other good Esperanto courses on Memrise for learning sentences?