[Course Forum] Japanese 1-7 by Memrise

Official Memrise Courses Japanese
,
1059

Hi @kristoferjanke

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
1060

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
1061

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? :thinking:

1062

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.

1063

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
1064

Hi @TadashiBrownlee80

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
1065

Ok, thanks for the quick answer!

1066

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?

1067

Hi @kristoferjanke

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
1068

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.

1069

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
1070

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
1071

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
1072

A post was split to a new topic: Japanese problem

1073

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
1074

Hi @MariusHD,

Thank you for your reports!
I have fixed the Romaji issues for
私には姉が二人います
人見知り
いってきます

Good catches and I find them super helpful, thank you!

8 Likes
1075

I’m not so much concerned abut learning the kanji themselves, since that’s a whole other complicated manner in and of itself, but when a word has a kanji spelling my concern with not learning it is that if I encounter the kanji spelling I won’t know or understand what that word is. Even if the Jouyou guide says it might not be best to use the kanji, the fact that such kanji spelling exists means that some literature and potentially even official documentation will or may still use it. As you mentioned, it could show up in manga or novels, and I feel something like that would be common enough knowledge for the author to not bother with furigana, though if it’s something a foreigner hasn’t learned they’d end up being stumped, likely trying to search through a kanji dictionary or trying to draw the kanji out in Google Translate on their phone. To use a perhaps extreme example, I know that the kanji for 下さい/ください has fallen out of common usage. However at a few train stations and on some posters on some businesses when I was in Japan I still encountered it. I initially guessed that it was ください, and then had to look it up to confirm whether that was the case.

I do think that if the decision going forward is to not use the kanji spelling primarily, that having the kanji alternative spelling on the presentation screen would be a good compromise. It can at least inform the learner that there is an alternate spelling that they might want to learn about.

One question I do have is would these changes be as visible to desktop users as app users? I know that at the moment the primary focus is on the app, but I am primarily a desktop user myself (as frustrating as it is not having the new grammar learning section).

1 Like
1076

So since I’ve finished the new Japanese 1, I thought I’d offer some… Criticism? Comments? Either way, take it as you will.

I like that the course was oriented kind of as if two people were having a conversation.

In Section 1-1, the phrase “へー！” being translated as “dear me!” seems a bit odd to me. As far as I’m aware, へー！ is kind of just a general expression of surprise, and can be used in places where “dear me” wouldn’t make much sense. Likewise, “dear me,” can have negative connotations to it that へー！ would not. I think that having the translation just be something like “Exclamation of surprise.” would probably convey the meaning better than a particular phrase that might not actually be the best fit.

In Section 1-4, “変わってますね！” seems to me like it’d have negative connotations if said to a person. You’re basically saying “You’re weird,” but in a somewhat polite way maybe? Granted, I might just not understand the Britishness of the given translation.

In the same section, “どんな映画が好きですか？” is “what kind of films do you like?” but “好きなマンガは何ですか？” is “what manga do you like?” This seems inconsistent to me, unless the latter is talking about a particular manga while the former is talking about genres. In which case, I think the fact that the first topic is general while the second is specific to a particular manga, rather than a kind of or genre of manga, needs to be better conveyed.

In 1-7, “週末” is translated as “a weekend,” but each week only has 1 weekend. I think “the weekend” may be better. There are many weekdays in a week, hence why 平日’s translation makes sense, but there’s only one weekend.

In 1-10, “おー、さすが日本人！” I feel like this can only really be said to a Japanese person. I feel like it’d be kind of strange to tell a foreigner this, but the translation doesn’t really convey that I feel.

In 1-12, “お味噌汁” being “a miso soup” and “しょうゆ” being “A soy sauce” seem odd. The connotation of “a -something-” is that you’re talking about one specific thing. I know that both of those refer to the general thing as well, so I feel like for both of these the “a” at the beginning of the translation can be dropped.

In 1-13, “自慢” is translated as “a boast; a pride.” Pride is not quantifiable. You cannot have “a pride” for/in something, you just have “pride” since it’s a concept.

Immediately following that is “私の自慢の父です” which is translated as “I am proud of my dad.” I might just not be understanding the connotations of the Japanese here, but I feel like this would be more like “My dad, who I am proud of.” Again, I might just not be understanding the Japanese in this.

In 1-15, what’s the difference between “頭がいい” and " 賢い" given that the former is translated here as “clever,” and I know the latter is also translated as “clever.” Like, I know the literal translation of the former is “head is good,” which, granted, there is an English phrase “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders,” which means someone’s very, like, with-it mentally.

1077

Hi, on the android app for Japanese all phrases with a comma or pause return as incorrect in pronunciation mode. I hope I have posted this correctly, sorry I don’t use forums.

1 Like
1078

No worries, I can move this post for you @emilysbunn68 (as this thread is old hat now).

Can you add a link to the course you have in mind, please - ie is a MemRise official course or a Community course?

Once done, I may close this thread as a lot has happened in the last year.

We are here to help :slight_smile:

PS

I’ve now moved the posts to MemRise’s Japanese 1-7.

4 Likes