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
1 Like
Hi @c95008,
Thank you for the question!
We definitely have plans to expand our courses but we have no set date for when this is happening unfortunately.
Could I also ask you a curious question? What kind of Japanese do you hope to learn or keep on learning?
Japanese can look/sound very different depending on situations. Are you interested in being able to understand novels, anime, manga, or have proficiency at business setting or talking with friends that are the same ages a you…
11 Likes
Hi @RenatoCron,
Thank you for flagging this. The removal of the furigana was a bug and it will be fixed in the upcoming app update.
Thank you also for sharing your concern about moving the community courses to the new website Decks. We have been trying to maintain both the community courses and the Memrise courses for a long time which have been very expensive for us. It was a very difficult decision for us to split the official and community courses, but otherwise we could’ve have lost both of them. The split will help us focus our resources on the improvement of our courses and the app, and although it is true that the app features are not optimised for learning certain languages like Japanese, that is exactly the reason why we are making the split so that we can make them better. I understand that the announcement of Decks came as a shock and rather a negative one for many people, but I hope you could see what this potentially means for the future progress of Memrise. I personally do care very much about you learners who are aspiring to master the Japanese language, and therefore very excited to know that we will have more development resources to support the Japanese course.
Keep your suggestions for improvement coming, because they always help me understand better what the learners need.
Thank you!
13 Likes
Hi Kana, Thanks for the reply. 
I’m interested in talking with friends and meeting people while in Japan. And maybe learn some useful language for daily life in Japan. Thanks!
1 Like
Ohh, that’s good.
I noticed that the Japanese layout changed, so that must one of the reasons that hiragana disappeared.
But, as you asked for comments, I don’t really like the new layout for Japanese yet. The Kanji/word appearing in that line at the middle of screen, could be a little bigger and the audio button less important.
With the audio button that big, we need to scroll down to see the attributes (furigana, literal translation)
1 Like
I’m afraid there is no plan to bring Grammar Levels to the web at this stage, we are first focusing to perfect the features and the courses on the app before we branch out. Please bear with us on this one.
As for the Kanji, there is a guideline for when to use Kanji recommended by the government.
Public documents are supposed to follow this guideline (or even use less Kanji for non-native speakers) and many of the public sign posts follow this as well. In the new Memrise courses (released last November), I have tried to follow this guideline as much as possible.
The suggested guideline and the general trend now is to write it in Kanji only when it has that literal meaning. Some Kanji can mean both abstract and specific thing. For example, the word “時（とき）” literally means “time”. When we literally want to say “time”, as in for example “time will tell”, we write it in Kanji （「時が知らせてくれるでしょう」）. However, in sentences like 「子どものときは、納豆（なっとう）が嫌い（きらい）でした」(“I didn’t like natto when I can a kid”), we write it in hiragana because it means “when” rather than the specific concept of “time”. Same with “事（こと）”, which could be translated to “thing” or “incident”;
- 考え事（かんがえごと）をしています。 I have something on my mind. I am thinking of some thing.
- 聞（き）いたことがあります。 I have heard of that before.
Another guideline of when to write in Kanji or not is; we don’t use Kanji when that is the suffix of the word, which is the case for 「私たち」. Here, 「たち」 is a suffix that adds the meaning of plurality. Where as in 「友達」, it is written in Kanji because it is not a suffix and you cannot separate the word 友達.
Above is the rough guideline, but people still write in a different way. Like you mentioned, there are people who want to use Kanji wherever possible to produce this “proper-ness”. I personally think it increases readability when Kanji is used differently according to the context.
Hope this helps! and thank you for reading this massive reply!
17 Likes
Thank you @RenatoCron for the feedback, yes I agree we have room to improve this screen to bring better focus on the right element of what you are learning. This is not the final stage of the app, so prepare yourself for future surprises!
13 Likes
Hello. Japanese courses 1-2 (with proper -する endings of verbs plain form and translations as a verbs infinitive) are fine and I’ve enjoyed it very much, thanks a lot. Japanese courses 3-7 (with -ます endings of verbs and translations as a verbs infinitive) are bad. Studying of polite form of verbs without studying its plain form is absolutely wrong and unconvinient way. Also, videos with native speakers have become much worse in quality from part 3 and on, but it is not so important as the absence of plain form of verbs. Why does courses got spoiled from part 3 and on? Will it be fixed? 
Hello, I recently had an issue where there was 3 “invisible” words that I couldn’t finish on the web version of Japanese 0. This suggestion fixed it a little:
But I only got 2 Grammar lessons from the app, so now my word count is at 209/210, and I can’t seem to find the last word/Grammar lesson. Could it be a paid exclusive? I’m on the free version for both the app, and the web version.
Hi @smaranam,
Thank you very much for trying out our Japanese courses! It’s great to hear you enjoyed the first two courses of Japanese.
Japanese 1 and 2 are actually new courses which were released last November.
Japanese 3 and onwards are still old content that we are working to renew, they actually follow different teaching principles and I understand that is causing confusions. We’re very sorry we are not scaling as fast as we all like. 申し訳ありません。I’d like to ask for your patience for this one. We will make an announcement when we release the later levels with new content.
かな
18 Likes
It’s been useful for me to know that the Grammar lessons on mobile apps were why there were missing items!
Yes, the second Grammar lesson is behind the paywall and you will need a subscription to learn on them. (The first Grammar lesson included two items and the second lesson has 1.)
If you have a subscription, you can also try the “script chats” we have in the mobile. If you look on the course for Japanese 0, you will see a speech bubble icon at the bottom right of the screen. That is the gate to script chats:)
19 Likes
Ok, thanks for the quick answer!
In Japanese 1, level 13, one of the clips of the natives saying words is wrong. For “お父さん,” when it was first introduced for me, one of the clips of a female actor saying “お父さんにそっくりですね” played instead.
In the same section, why was 兄弟 (きょうだい)'s kanji not used? Given that it’s the kanji for a proper word it should be part of the guidelines, no? Or is it just about difficulty level?
Thank you for flagging these!
I fixed the video issue with “お父さん”, should be okay now:)
The Kanji question for 兄弟 is a bit trickier…
Depending on the combination of brother/sister, you can write the word in different ways.
兄弟,
兄妹,
even if you were only sisters, you can write 姉妹 and read it “きょうだい” as well. I have a younger sister and we are both female, but I still use the word きょうだい to describe our relationship, for example. That’s why I didn’t want to limit the meaning of the word with Kanji in this particular course.
Here is the ratio of use;
https://furigana.info/r/きょうだい
Very interesting, no? Hope this helps!
12 Likes
Wouldn’t しまい be the more common reading for that though, especially since that would remove the ambiguity of the gender of your sibling when speaking?
I suppose it’s a bit more complicated than I thought, looking it up each of those also has another reading to eliminate the ambiguity of what kind of sibling relationship is being talked about.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/兄弟#Japanese
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/姉妹#Japanese
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/兄妹#Japanese
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/姉弟#Japanese
Those percentage frequencies are rather surprising though. Checking that site, they claim that “きょうだい” is the most common reading of that, with over 61% of the occurrences being read that way. That does surprise me.
Hi @kristoferjanke,
I totally understand your surprise.
I think it also has to do with where the word appears in the sentence.
You would say しまい to describe “relationship”.
＞私たちは「しまい」です
きょうだい is almost the equivalent of “siblings” and we will use it as noun.
＞きょうだいはいますか？ Do you have siblings
＞きょうだいに会うのが楽しみです I’m looking forward to seeing my brother(s)/sister(s)
In the latter sentences, you shouldn’t replace the word きょうだい with しまい.
12 Likes
Another question about not using kanji, this time from 1-1, and I know this appears again in 1-16, why was the kanji for “面白い/おもしろい” not used? Like, with いろいろ I get it based on your description of the Jouyou kanji guidelines, since “colour colour” doesn’t actually have anything to do with colour in how it’s used, but in this case isn’t this just the kanji for this word? I guess I’m still kind of confused on the guidelines, since Wikipedia in English at least doesn’t really explain when to and not to use kanji based on the Jouyou guidelines in the article you previously linked about it.
1 Like
Hi! @KanaTsumoto
I noticed an irregularity in Japanese 1 for British English speakers - level 13 We Are Family
It says:
Japanese: 私には姉が二人います (This is also was is spoken by the narrator)
but then:
Romanji: ane ga futari imasu
Should this not be “watashi ni wa ane ga futari imasu”
Kind regards,
MariusHD
1 Like
Hi @kristoferjanke,
A rough guideline for “whether it’s a Jouyou Kanji” or not" is whether it literally means what the Kanji means? For example, 面白い for "おもしろい” is not preferred because the word doesn’t literally mean “white(白い) face(面)”. Since Memrise does not have a good system of teaching Kanji yet, I didn’t want to unnecessarily burden the learners with extra Kanji that they can get by without knowing.
That said, I understand how you would find it useful to learn the Kanji for these words too. It is useful to know extra Kanjis for when you read novels or manga since the art of expression goes over the boundaries of Jouyou Kanji. In a similar way, knowing more Kanji will allow you to enjoy more cultural or Japanese word jokes or even meaningfulness of your Japanese friends’ Kanji names.
Actually, for me to understand better, could you tell me why you’d like to learn more Kanji? That will be super interesting and informative for me:)
Given the current functionality and teaching policy, we probably won’t teach Kanji as the primary way of writing those words (“面白い/おもしろい”, “いろいろ” etc), but as an alternative solution, would you find it useful to see these as additional information on the presentation screen? We could maybe add a section for “Alternative Kanji” under literal translation and Furigana sections.
7 Likes