Are these courses generally considered good and worth going through?
Right now I’m only using Memrise to learn/revise Genki 1 (eventually Genki 2) kanji/vocab and Tae Kim’s to try and learn some of the grammar / different word forms (like ではありません vs じゃありません vs じゃない ).
Do these courses offer anything those 2 don’t?
These courses have the native speaker clips right?
@KanaTsumoto
In Japanese 3 for American English speakers, lesson 19, ききます has the kanji 聴きます. I see on jisho.org that that is an alternative form of 聞きます. My understanding is that the latter is more standard but I don’t know for sure. Maybe this is one of the cases where a semicolon and two kanji is appropriate. Please let me know which is commonly used. Thanks!
Edit: Actually I have the same question for 見ます vs 観ます (the latter is given, but the former has already been a vocab word in 見て so maybe that was intentional). That’s the same lesson as the first question.
I just got an update on Memrise and it seems like some of the issues I was having with the distractors algorithm may have been addressed. I’m not sure, because I’m definitely still having the issue with kanji in Speed Practice mode. It’s always the same 3 distractors. It makes the review nearly pointless. I can easily pass vocab that I don’t know very well, and it specifically affect Kanji which are the hardest to learn and distinguish. I’ll link my original post as a reference. EDIT: Here’s another example of pretty useless distractors:
Additionally, I have two requests regarding the input method for Japanese. It would be better if the provided characters for input were scrambled from instance to instance. As it is, you can pretty mush memorize the layout of the kanji on the provided keyboard and not remember the kanji themselves. This is especially important on compound kanji where you need to remember the order. Having more distractors in the keyboard would be nice as well. It would also be nice to be able to turn off the provided keyboard, so that I can force myself to learn to type in Japanese.
The most recent update made timed practice significantly less challenging. I would appreciate being able to choose my difficulty level. Some users might just want to play a moderately challenging game, but as a paying user, I would like to actually to learn to differentiate the kanji.
Thanks for considering.
In Japanese 5, Number 17, for “私たちは田舎の村に行きました,” is there any particular reason it’s “私たち” with the hiragana instead of “私達” with the kanji? The previous one, “私達は素敵な海のそばのホテルを選びました,” used the kanji.
Hello at all,
I might have discovered an incorrect transaction with Japanese 1 (chapter 13 We are family)
There’s the word お世辞 which is translated as fake compliments. However as far as I now, お世辞 means initially only compliments (Which is also seen in the sentence learned i nthe same chapter お世辞が上手ですね - you flatter me (or literally "You are good with compliments)
Can someone from the team please check this again and verify if this indeed is supposed to mean “fake compliments”?
Many thanks
Aki
To follow up on this, my Japanese 3 has corrected itself, but after the addition of 2 words to Japanese 0, my Japanese 0 now shows as 207/210 words complete, and throws an error when I attempt to “Learn new words.” Before it showed 205/207.
For the past few days, the listening skills (purple button) for Japanese 4 has been non-functional. All the other courses are working fine. (Japanese 1-3). I prefer using the purple button for my daily review and not the blue button.
And while this technically isn’t the place, it’s the same bug and in a Memrise developed course. Spanish (Mexico) 5 just did the same thing. Yesterday it was fine. Today listening skills is gone. In the app and on the web site.
Edit: Spanish (Mexico) 3 and 2 also just lost listening skills. I’m guessing there’s some sort of database shifting going on? Maybe?
Hi @slender4,
Could you send me a screenshot of this test? I believe you that it’s real but a screenshot will help me understand where the issue is! Thanks!
Hi @Digicrest,
Another thing that might be different in the Memrise official Japanese courses is that they are focused on equipping the learners to speak quickly so they have more colloquial than literature languages.
Good question! This is a slightly advanced concept for learners and may not be appropriate in our courses… but let me explain anyway.
From what I see in the course, the translations for each are following; (do they show like that on your end as well?)
聞きます to ask; to hear; to listen
聴きます to listen (to music)
見ます to look; to see
観ます to watch
The translations show the subtle differences of how the different Kanjis are used. I personally do distinguish them and use different Kanji depending on what I want to say, but some might say that it is not so important. I think it is useful to know the differences fr when you expand your Kanji vocabulary later on.
For example, for “watching sports games” you say スポーツ観戦（かんせん） because you “watch”, or 試聴（しちょう） for when you have a taster listen to Spotify music.
However, since Memrise at the moment (watch this space!) doesn’t have a good place to explain these details, I can understand how it can be unfair to test on these. I will make sure they don’t come up as each other’s distractors in multiple tests.
If you have more suggestions, let me know!
----Reply on your other question (sorry, I couldn’t add it as a separate message since the system doesn’t allow me to comment consecutively------
(This is about the distractors being too obvious and not helpful)
Hi @jklingen9290
I’m sorry for the wait on this, and thank you for your kind patience.
We have plans to regenerate all distractors based on our new algorithm in the coming days. Please bare with us a little longer…
Thank you for the cool suggestion for breaking down the Kanji in the keyboard (have I understood it correctly?). We won’t have enough resources to work on this straight away, but I will definitely consider your idea)
Additionally about disabling the app keyboard, you can actually do this by tapping on the keyboard icon at the top right of the screen (only appears for typing tests). The downside for this is that the system cannot mark your answers correct if you write a Kanji in hiragana even the hiragana themselves might be correct. For example, if you type わたし for 私, the system cannot mark you correct. This is something we are trying to fix as well, but it will take some time I’m afraid.
Thanks for your reply Kana,
I understand the explanation regarding the kanji.
I saw the update and checked my app. The new distractors algorithm seems to be excellent. I can’t get even get to 50 in the speed round where I was regularly hitting 100 before. Thank you very much.
Regarding the kanji keyboard, I think the fastest and most effective change you could make (if it wasn’t already included in the update) is just to shuffle the characters around each time. The human brain is so good at figuring out patterns that it will look for them anywhere. For example, the Japanese word for emergency has 4 characters. I cannot remember what order they are supposed to go in, but in a typing exercise, it’s easy for me to remember a sequence of 4 buttons. If the keyboard is laid out the same way every time, I will be memorizing the layout and not the contents of the keys. I don’t think breaking kanji into radicals is a good idea, so I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear.
I don’t think it’s worth your time to worry about entering with a Japanese input keyboard. Those keyboards usually allow you to convert hiragana into kanji. I haven’t had any trouble inputting with them.
Just curious, is there any timeline or plans for official Japanese courses after Japanese 7? Thanks!
There’s no hiragana anymore on some words at Japanese 5. And to make it worse, the new interface don’t allow us to copy the text anymore, so, good luck finding how it’s written just by audio.
In this example, you should be able to know that there’s probably a “う” after よ and probably "い"after せ. I know that at this point (level 5) you should be able to understand Japanese a least a little, but this app should make easier and give us information, not hiding it.
So far, I’m very disappointed with the last changes made by memrise. Where’s the examples? Community courses have a lot of Memories included, but officials courses have none. That don’t make any sense.
And, after Japanese 3, there’s no more “learn with locals” so, Idk anymore what’s the officials course advantages…
Hi @kristoferjanke,
Thank you for flagging the inconsistencies between items with 私たち and 私達.
They are alternatives for each other, making them both correct.
For better consistency, I have changed all to 私たち, as that is the officially recommended choice for this expression.
These changes will mean that there will be a few items (with this Kanji) that are marked as “new words to learn”. I’m sorry for this inconvenience!
Thanks!
Hi @Akiho
Good observation 
!
the etymology might be different, but in a practical sense, お世辞 almost always means “fake compliment”.
If you say "お世辞でしょ？(That’s お世辞, right?)”, it will mean “you are just saying that to be nice, aren’t you?”, and if you start your sentence with "これはお世辞じゃないんですけど…”, you are saying “I’m not just saying this to be nice, but…” and pre-marking your following speech as genuine and not a fake compliment. These cultural communications are interesting things to highlight, we will consider putting them in the course somehow in the future. Thanks for highlighting your interest on this!
Hi @kristoferjanke,
Do you see this on the web or on your app?
There is now a grammar mode that is only available in the apps, and not on the web.
The web also counts the grammar levels as items and there are 3 grammar items to learn in Japanese 0. I’m suspecting those are the hidden 3 items in your 207/210. What do you think?
Kana,
It was on the web. I tested the grammar items on the app and it progressed, so that was it. Any word on when that will be coming to web, since I do most of my learning on PC?
To add on to this, the words “learned” seem to be impossible to review. It shows that I have 2 (soon to be 3) things to review from Japanese 0, but because grammar review hasn’t been introduced yet, I presume it will just sit there forever telling me I have to review something that I can’t.
Is there any rule governing when to and when not to use the kanji? I noticed that after I asked this, you seem to have almost completely removed the kanji 達 from the course entirely. I was under the impression that 私達 was the proper, correct, and most common way to write it, so is there some kind of rule, or is the use of that kanji just going out of style at the moment?
Hi @haleosquared,
I’m sorry it took me so long to reply to you. We could not figure out what was causing this, but we finally found out and we are fixing this as we speak. You should be able to see the fix in the coming days if not by the end of today. Thank you!
Hi @haleosquared,
Thank you for reporting this, it was a bug and it has now been fixed. Please log out and in again to see the changes. Thanks!
Regards and happy learning!
Ángela
