In the hopes that Xenolinguiphile will see this…
Issue in your course. Many words end with an es “s” instead of sigma “ς”. You have a lot of "gotcha"s in there as well (based on ’ marker eg. ή ), and mixed with an error like that is painful.
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I just found one for ἄλλος. There are also errors in rough breathing marks, soft breathing marks, and accents. I was told I was getting δέ wrong over and over again. Thank you for starting this thread. Hopefully it will get some attention.
It will help if you could give a link to the course, please.
@Xenolinguiphile does not seem to be active.
@DW7
Sorry to zombie the thread, but I was about to offer to assist @Xenolinguiphile to update the course. The link for the course is https://www.memrise.com/course/51095/basics-of-biblical-greek/, and I’m happy to take over as maintainer of the course and update it. Otherwise I might look to create a new one, but that reduces the value of the platform as a whole.
I would also offer to take over https://www.memrise.com/course/83643/biblical-greek-paradigms/ as well - I haven’t started the course so don’t know if there are issues, but I’d expect some based on the above feedback.
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Hi @oWretch,
Why not go to “Abandoned courses” and create a new thread asking if you could become a Contributor?
Having this Forum and no response meets two requirements.
There’s guidance if you need it.
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It seems obvious someone took over the course, much is changed about it in the last few months. Anyone know who did it? We need to have a chat … lol. Some of the improvements are great … but some are getting really old really fast… (I don’t know how to type Greek but, for example, the word transliterated “Tis” has two meanings that are quite different … but there is NOTHING in the descriptions to help the learner know which one is intended so you’re doing a total guessing game to figure out which one).
Also, I appreciate on one hand how the level of strictness forces the learner to learn the prepositions (because it forces the learner to put in “gen” for genitive and such) … but there’s two issues there. One, if you make a mistake it shows you the word and then has you type it out. In the “type out” portion, those haven’t been made “as strict” so when a word has multiple meanings depending on the case of the verb, after only writing “gen definition” it is bumping on as if the correct answer was input without the chance to enter in the dat and/or accusative. So if it is going to be that strict on correct answers, those need to be fixed.
However … some need to be eased off a bit … for the word transliterated “doulos” it shouldn’t matter if I write “servant slave” or “slave servant.”
Someone obviously took over that class because many errors are fixed and it never used to be that strict (and my progress was wiped and I had to start over … which is fine, I planned on that anyway because I was a few months out of practice). Whoever took it over, if you’d be willing to, can we pitch a few ideas on how to keep it as academic as it is but lighten a few things up that shouldn’t be that strict? If the prepositions can let you by with one part of the definitions while the other words are asininely strict, it should be possible to increase the strictness on the prepositions where necessary and reduce the others shouldn’t it?
Or not thanks for the response? Its been a quite a while since I posted this … am I supposed to @ someone specific to get a response?
Not really, but since the original author isn’t active in the forum and @oWretch was thinking about maintaining the course, tagging him might trigger a reaction in case he isn’t watching this thread …
Hi @philiplang926. My apologies for not responding earlier. As Olaf mentioned, I didn’t have notifications configured for the thread, so I didn’t see you message.
Thanks for taking the time to send your feedback. I’m happy to chat about ways to improve the course. Are you doing your study on the computer, or on a mobile device? I did most of mine on a mobile so I may have missed something in how the computer learning works.
Some of the concerns you raise I think are limitations within Memrise (e.g. the requirement to enter the answers in the order presented). I personally would like to set it to allow the answers in any order, although the way Mounce lists the definitions is in order of frequency you would use in translation.
In regards to prepositions, I’ve just taken the chance to read the docs (!?!) and the use of semi-colons to delimit a list of answers allows the answers to be given in any order (for up to 4 answers - beyond that they need to be in the right order), or just one of the answers. Let me think more on the value of implementing this.
In regards to τις/τίς, I agree that it is tricky to identify which is which. The secret is to look for the accent. The accented τίς is the interrogative pronoun, which introduces the question, while the unaccented τις is the indefinite pronoun which answers the question posed by τἰς. I could update the part of speech label to say interrogative or indefinite, but then it gives it away 
.
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no problem, thanks for getting back to me. I just assumed if someone commented in a thread a person was in, the person was notified. I also assumed that whoever had taken over would be notified. I apparently assumed wrong! (I’m no good with computer, web stuff …)
That’s good to know that’s how Mounce ordered them. I didn’t realize that so thanks for that info.
Also I found that on “Tis” but a few weeks after I did my first post and forgot I had commented on that so I did find that but thanks for info on that as well.
Oh, and I do my study on both. I do regular lessons on computer but I do my reviews mostly on mobile (because when I get a word that has 6 different definitions, mobile gives multiple choice and web based makes you write them out and then I get frustrated when I wrote “Church, gathering, assembly” instead of “gathering, church, assembly” (I know its not that order but for example). Since I only know a limited level on how some of this works, my input on improvements will be very limited but I’ll try to brain storm some.
I really do, by the way, appreciate that you did take it over and fix the screw ups because I was just about to make a whole new course but, as I’ve said, I’m really bad at web stuff and I found it to be horribly frustrating and tedious. So, despite some of the things that I dislike about it currently, I for one really appreciate that you took it over.
@philiplang926 I’ve updated the course to split out prepositions into their individual cases, and updated the commas to semi-colons so the answers will not be as strict.
I hope that make your study more enjoyable
Only just started looking at it. I restarted the levels with the prepositions. I REALY like what you did with the prepositions. That’s a GREAT way to do it (and takes care of the frustrating, “I typed the right definition but forgot to type [gen] so I got it wrong” issue.
I suspect there’s no way to do a happy medium with the answers; either its so strict as to have the definitions in the perfect order or its so lax you can enter just one of the definitions out of say, three or four definitions.
None the less, I am HIGHLY appreciative of what you’ve done and, as I said, REALLY like what you did with the prepositions. I think that’ll make them easier to learn.
I see you added a “1st John” chapter. Is that words that occur less than X number of times but are in 1st John which is a good book to start practicing translation and interpretation?
If I knew what I was doing with these programs I’d be glad to help. I’m not sure I would know what to do or how to actually “perfect” the course given the limitations of the program but any imperfections (or inability to perfect) I think are due to that limitation and certainly NOT from your lack of effort on this course. I wish I were able to fully express how much I appreciate your work though. It is important to me to be able to translate the Greek and Hebrew Bible and these programs have helped immensely.
Different question: Do you have influence on what “random answers” come up with the multiple guess ones?
not sure you can fix this or if the Memrise people have to do something, but I had one come up with 2 answers that were exactly the same and it marks one wrong. This MIGHT be the same as my last question (do you have influence …) because it might be posting an answer to two different questions that just happen to be the same.
Thanks for your feedback again Philip. I glad you like the way the prepositions now work.
In terms of order vs only having to answer one, there doesn’t seem to be a medium with Memrise. Using commas to separate terms forces you to answer exactly, and semicolons mean any order but also only need one. I agree it would be nice to have a way to force all options but not worry about order.
I had done a big clean-up of the words in the database but obviously missed some. There shouldn’t be any more duplicate answers (e.g. from), but let me know if you do come across them. This should also make sure all the other odd answers (e.g. 5 & 6 above) are no longer presented. This is the extent of the control I have over the random answers. I assume there is some smarts in Memrise to pick similar answers (in both languages) to the correct one to make it slightly challenging. On your phone you will need to sign out and back in for it to refresh the course.
I have to admit that I’ve added the 1 John (and soon Colossians) vocabulary as it is a requirement for my course. I’ll add some detail to the description, but you are correct that they are the words in 1 John not covered in Mounce. 1 John is the typical book used in first-year Greek in seminaries as it is one of the easiest to read early. Colossians is similar to this. So yes, I would suggest using 1 John as the foundation for practicing translation.
Again awesome work. Also glad you cleaned up other odd answers. That was always irritating to mark wrong an answer that was technically correct but for some reason included page numbers and such … why was that even an option (I’m aware that was put in before you took over) and why is it wrong? So that is really nice. The only issue I find now is sometimes I’ll get an answer divided by semicolons and another divided by comas, otherwise they’re the same. I’ll just post them when I find them.
Good to know about the phone. I was wondering why it didn’t update!!
Also good to know about the Greek lessons. I’ve always heard the Johns (Gospel and Epistles) were great starting points. I’ve been doing the Gospel myself. I took Hebrew in Seminary not Greek. I took Greek in my bachelor’s program and that was about 17 years ago so I’m re-teaching myself (my first time was with David Alan Black’s grammar which I had to throw out because my dumb dog peed on it so I picked up Mounce because I liked Van Pelt and Pratico’s Hebrew Grammar and figured it would be in similar fashion).
I did find two more with duplicate words.
Hey, are you doing the Biblical Greek paradigms from Xenolinguiphile as well? If so, on level 34 the 3rd person aorist active is listed as the 2nd person aorist middle (understandable mistake since the 3rd person active is the same as the 2nd person middle in all tenses. However, all the plurals are listed as 1st person.
@philiplang926 Yes, I have taken on that course too. This was a simple mistake of copy/paste/forget to update. Fixed now. Thanks for letting me know.
Memrise has some serious limitations that hamper our use of it.
I went and tried to make my own course, as I’m gearing up to teach a class for my church, and ran into all sorts of testing problems. The commas and semicolons are rough. I wish we could just decline to have tests on our courses, and just use them as flash cards, English to Greek, and Greek to English.