As Memrise has changed it’s policy the old forums are deleted. This topic replaces the forum for “Basic Slovak” by loeiten http://www.memrise.com/course/50432/basic-slovak/.
All the best
loeiten
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As the “Course details” for the course can only be 500 characters long, I had to put this information in the forum.
Prime sources:
http://slovake.eu/en/
http://www.surfacelanguages.com/language/Slovak/
Thanks to:
Everyone contributing in the old forum (sorry for forgetting your names)
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Problem for Slovak course!
I have to type in now AL THE VARIANTS!! any correct variant is marked wrong!! For example motorka is wrong, motocykel is wrong. I am obliged to type ‘mtorka, motocykel’ to count as correct. Please fix this! Also the same for z, zo. Zo is not correct on its own, nor is z. And all answers with 2 varaints. It’s very disturbing. Thank you!
Thank you for notifying me.
I guess this is due to an API change from the Memrise team, and it seems
like the only fix is to manually change the entry for every occurrence.
I am quite busy ATM, but I can try to make some gradual change to each
entry. If you should come across an entry I haven’t change in a two weeks
time, please notify me again :).
All the best!
…or let me rephrase:
It would be of great help if you could write here all words you come across.
(I don’t know why Memrise has made these things hard to change from the
course makers side)
Best
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Hello, is this course still maintained? A few pronunciations in the infinitive verbs section are incorrect.
Dear Uzivatelka
The page is not maintained at the moment.
It is, however, not abandoned.
Maintenance will start again March 7th earliest.
Before that I cannot promise any edits (unfortunately).
Are there any particular pronunciations you are referring to?
I will note it, and fix it as fast as I can.
Anyway, thanks for notifying 
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zapamätať si, mať sa, usmievať sa
I have moved on to level 19 negative forms, where I am having troubles with the 3rd person singular and plural- the ones with slashes. Check that writing just the verb should be accepted - you certainly shouldn’t have to type parentheses and slashes in your answer.
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Thank you for your feedback.
It is very helpful.
My apologies that I cannot promise to fix this before March.
Every now and then, Memrise make changes to the API without notifying the authors of the courses, and you get the slash/parentheses bugs which you mention.
I will fix it as soon as I get free time on my hands ;).
Until then: Thank you for your patience.
2 Likes
Finally I’m back and can review the course again 
.
Regarding the pronunciation:
The pronunciation sounds correct for me, although some words like “zapamätať” does not have any audio attached to it. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you?
Regarding level 19:
Hmm…I tried level 19 now, and the alternative forms seems to work. That is:
“nie je"
was accepted for
"he/she/it is”.
Did you have this problem on a mobile device?
It could be that the API has changed again while I was absent.
Best
If you are on a UNIX-like system (LINIUX, OSX etc.), you can use wget.
It is possible to download all the mp3 files use a syntax like:
wget -r -nd -A=mp3 https://slovake.eu/en/courses/a1
Have not done the course for a while. I am not sure about level 19 anymore. However the error is still present in level 15. The audio for “zapamätať si” simply says “si”
Dear @Uzivatelka
Thanks for your feedback.
That’s correct. Some of the audios are missing simply because I haven’t been able to find any good audios. Luckily, Slovak is pronounced as it is written (to a very high degree). It is possible that I find a good audio in the future, until then, level 2 can give you hints on the pronunciation.
All the best
loeiten
Then I think it would be better to remove audio altogether from such words. The app features listening tests, and when one hears only “si,” one should not be expected to select zapamätať as the answer.
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I see…that can be annoying indeed.
I’ll get around to fix it once I get time.
Thanks for reporting 
I’m forcing myself through this Course but find myself quite often annoyed by a number of topics.
– Audio missing / half - complete (see above discussions)
– too many student related words that any other person will hardly need (e.g. ziacka, jednosmerny, prednazka etc.)
– pronunciation lessons for individual characters (e,g, ch, l, a, o) are simply unneccessary and nerve-wrecking
– the same applies for some declination lessons, e.g. ja mám, tu más, oni / ony sa neusmieva and so on … what is this for ? and with one question it even makes a difference even whether you put the ( ) or not , this is just annoying
– some words are simply too easy e,g, auto, pizza and others of very little relevance to everyday life, e.g. nocny stolik, polica, bohac, kniezatstsvo …
– on the other hand, I would really appreciate to learn and hear more entire phrases that are helpful in everyday life, without having to type them character-by-character. This ability to type may come at a very later stage, most probably after or outside of Memrise. What matters more now, would be to get a simple understanding of what you hear on the street. I had a very good experience with this kind of learning during my first Memrise course in Basic Russian.
Greetings,
Bruno, Vienna / Austria
Dear Bruno
Thank you for coming with suggestions that could make the course better. I will address your suggestions one by one below.
- The missing audio: In general there are quite some audios missing from this course. Originally I meant the audio as a help for the written learning, and not something to be prompted. I will remove the audio which only contains “si” and “sa”. However, I strongly discourage learning from the audio, simply because there are too few words with audio. Unfortunately, memrise does not give me an option to disable the audio prompt (it is disabled, but there seems to be a bug with the memrise API as noted here).
- Student related words: Indeed, the ratio student words to other words may be a bit high. Luckily, you can disable those words as explained here.
- Pronunciation lessons: I find this lesson valuable as the pronunciation of almost all Slovak words can be derived from this (i.e. it lessens the need for audio). Memrise also gives an option to ignore whole levels.
-
Declination lesson: Maybe I do not get your suggestion here? Declination is a part of the Slovak language, thus I find it beneficial to include in the course. If you know about a better way to introduce this (which sure it is), I’m open for suggestions .
- Regarding the reference to parenthesis (), it looks like memrise changes the behavior of signs like “()”, “,” and “/”. If you know what words which depends on the parenthesis, please let me know .
- Easy words/little relevance: Yes, some of the words are “easy”, and some may appear to have “little relevance”. Be aware, though, that you might be surprised of what words which are relevant when conducting an actual conversation. Feel free to skip them in the same manner as indicated in point 3.
-
Phrases: Phrases would be nice indeed . Especially for the advanced users. However, this is currently out of scope for this course (i.e. there are some phrases, but they are not being emphasized). If I do not remember wrong, @ian.hiett’s course All-Encompassing Slovak contains more phrases. Maybe you can pick-up some good phrases from the street there :).
A final tip: If you feel like forcing yourself through a lot of courses, check that you are not falling into the sunk cost fallacy ;).
In any case: Good luck with your learning, and keep them suggestions coming!
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So…I finally had some time to look at the problem with audios containing “si” and “sa”.
Is it still an issue?
I downloaded the app today, and tried to access the “listen skill” button, but it seems to be disabled (which is also the intention).
After thinking a bit more about the problem, the option of removing “si” and “sa” may be a bad idea after all, as the meaning usually change whether “si” or “sa” is present. For example, consider the following:
- Učiť sa - to learn
- Učiť - to teach
Thus, if you are prompted for “učiť” in the listening phase and “sa” is removed, either “to teach” or “to learn” would be correct. Things becomes worse for verbs like “nechať” etc.
Finally, as I find it better to have some audio than no audio, I would like to keep “si” and “sa” unless you all think that it should be removed (you can vote by “liking” the options below).
I would like to keep the audio as it is.