Does anyone else find it confusing and annoying when Memrise puts the audio for an entirely different word with the suggested answer?
How can anyone expect to learn a language when it is not accurately presented?
I find I need to consult with other internet resources, as Memrise can’t be trusted.
An alternative is to mute the sound, but that has obvious problems because I am trying to learn correct pronunciation.
(I am not sure you understood what memrise is…)
are there already “official” courses for Bulgarian?
probably the course creator - be that “memrise” or some user - did not notice the mistake. You should check the fora for Bulgarian, then try to contact the course creator somehow…
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You need to start by indicating which course you are referring to. Thousands are out there, some by Memrise, some by individuals like Hydroptere or me.
Mistakes are likely, they happen, the forum is here to exchange between users and creators.
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The course was selected. It is Bulgarian.
This mistakes- plural- are very numerous.
Individuals like you seek to merely dismiss criticism, I have mentioned this numerous times to deaf ears.
Hi @witt1031 ! If you don’t post a link to that course, nobody can help you. A lot if people really would want to help you, me including but I have no idea which is the course you are talking about.
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There are numerous problems. I have given specific examples, if you were interested in fixing it, you could easily do it.
I took a look at some of the leaderboards in the Bulgarian category, and finally found the course in question. It is this one: http://www.memrise.com/course/53035/hacking-bulgarian/
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=[quote=“witt1031, post:6, topic:4634”]
There are numerous problems. I have given specific examples,
[/quote]
You have NOT given ANY specific examples, or even any clue to what course you are talking about, other than it is for Bulgarian There are a lot of Bulgarian courses on Memrise all created by other users of Memrise. There are no ‘‘official Memrise Bulgarian’’ courses so you have to rely on the community to help, and we do want to help as shown on this thread.
Is this the course you are talking about? Someone has spent a lot of time looking FOR YOU, when you could have easily provided the link to the course as asked.
Multiple people have tried to help despite you providing NO information, just vague complaints. and fixing a course created by another user of Memrise IS NOT easy. Someone need to get permission to edit, find all the mistakes and correct them. If you listed the mistakes it would be easier, but I certainly won’t spend the time going through the whole course without further information.
http://www.memrise.com/course/2148/basic-bulgarian-words-with-audio/ I’ve used and proof-read this course with audio. There are no mistakes, you could try this course if you don’t want to provide SPECIFIC entry details about mistakes on the other course.
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The reason I am no longer giving specific information is that I have already done so to Memrise. I am not wasting anymore time on it, other than my notification to others that they are not losing their minds, there are problems with the course, Hacking Bulgarian.
I would like to see it fixed, but I doubt it will be, so I am finding alternatives.
@witt1031 ~ I am sorry that you are so flustered, but please note that the people who are responding to you in this forum are all just users of the software, like yourself. None of us are employed by Memrise. We are just trying to be helpful. None of us know what level of contact you may have had with Memrise in the past. Hopefully your issue(s) can be resolved at some point, and in some fashion ~ hopefully by the course creator (who is also not employed by Memrise).
Edit: It appears the course creator (VioletaAngelovaAngelova) is not active yet in this forum, but maybe @Lien from Memrise could try to reach out to the person to see if she/he is still active with Memrise. That is at least one positive step towards some kind of solution.
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Thanks @pdao
The creator of Hacking Bulgarian hasn’t been active since 2012 so there doesn’t seem to be much point in emailing them. Would anyone here like to be made a contributor to the course?
Alternatively, here are some other (community-created) Bulgarian courses:
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Thank you.
@Lien If you want to add me as a contributor I can see what I can do with the course.
@witt1031 If I’m to make some edits to the course, I need to know which items you are having problems with.
I haven’t used this course (I don’t think the Latin phonetic representation of Cyrillic words are of good quality) but I’m happy to help - IF I know what needs fixing.
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I had to stop using the audio on Level 4 because the audio on many words didn’t match what was written.
For example, the word for “help”, which is pomosht, had an entirely different multi-syllabic audio track.
When I have time, I will try to forward more examples.
I think it would be easy to see which audio tracks don’t match by just going through it, starting at Level 4, since the anglicized pronunciations are obviously different. Supposedly, the anglicized pronunciation words are just what Bulgarian is supposed to sound like to an English speaker.
There are more sophisticated issues, such as accurate sounds of the Cyrillic alphabet, conjugating words, and spelling using the proffered Cyrillic keyboard, but I am only concerned with the very basic ones of hearing the word pronounced and recognizing it when I hear it.
It took a while until my very limited knowledge of Bulgarian was adequate to understand that it was a problem with the audio tracks and not my ears.
Looking at the course, the best thing about it is that it has audio (I found the ‘help’ audio problem) otherwise there are quite a few issues with the entries and presentation IMO. but if Lien adds me as a creator I can have a look in more detail.
When I was first learning Bulgarian on Memrise (back on the beta site) there were less than 20 courses published, and I was surprised when I started to find a lot of mistakes on the courses. I’d assumed that there was some quality control (now that assumption seems ridiculous to me, but I was innocent and new!).
Unfortunately there aren’t obvious indications to excited new users that most courses are made by other users of Memrise and the quality can vary. - Well there are, but users first coming to the site can be forgiven for missing the clues.
For more Bulgarian audio I recommend trying the course I linked to above, if you haven’t already.
Indeed, @witt1031 if you fancy having a go at course editing and maintenance. Edited to add - it is a big responsibility editing someone else’s course, and there is quite a lot to consider before making changes -especially since they can’t be undone. The course creation facilities are adequate, but they are not always straight forward to use. I’m happy to work together to improve the course if you want to.
I’ve added [Course Forum] Hacking Bulgarian to the title of the thread so we can discuss edits/changes here.
The course isn’t as long as I thought it was, so that’s good!
Leggi & witt1031, you’re both contributors now. Let me know if you need help, thanks!
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