A seemingly common theme for me to question the absence of kanji, but again, looking at Japanese 2, Level 1, why is the kanji for 靴/くつ not used? As far as I’m aware that’s the only real meaning of that kanji.
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Hi @jklingen9290,
Thank you for getting touch, and thank you for learning on and completing Japanese 2 
I’m sorry for the inconvenience caused by that mysterious one last word to learn. Let’s see what we can so… There are a few different versions of “Japanese 2” course. Could you send me a screenshot of the course dashboard or, if you are on web, send me the link to the course you are learning on?
Thank you also for the suggestion for making the Review function more universal. Could you help understand this further? I’m sorry for my super stupid question, and I really know this, but some of the app function are still mysterious for me and this is one of them. I understand that there are two types of streak. One that is course-specific, which is based on the number of words learnt or reviewed, and the other is account-specific, which is based on activity time. If I’m correct, you won’t lose the streak for the latter as long as you enough time on your account, regardless of the course. So is it the case that what you are trying to attain is to maintain your streak across all courses you are learning on?
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Hi @kristoferjanke,
Thank you for your questions!
To be honest, the decision here was quite subjective. I’ve tried to avoid the complicated Kanji as much as possible due to the obvious (and painfully loud) absence of “Kanji teaching mode”. However, I have included some of the complicated Kanjis when I think there is enough benefit to be able to recognise that Kanji, either because it is commonly seen in town (e.g. “楽しい”) or it helps you to distinguish words better (e.g. “熱い” and “暑い”). くつ is a complicated Kanji, and I personally thought it is not super helpful to learn it especially without a good Kanji mode. So, that’s the reason. I’m pretty sure you’re not convinced 
Let me try to understand the relevance of this issue a bit better, could you help me?
What would you say your pain point is when you see these issues or inconsistencies?
Is it the frustration for when the system marks you incorrect when you use the correct Kanji in typing tests? And that is a super valid frustration, you should not be marked wrong for using the correct Kanji just because that is not used in that particular course.
Adding the Kanji versions as “other alternative answers” is something I may be able to do (although, the current system means that I’ll have to do this manually). Let me hear your thoughts…
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The course is Japanese 2 for American English speakers. I’m not sure what the dashboard is, but here’s a screenshot:
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an account streak. I looked at my profile page and it only displays my longest course streak. I guess I’m sort of asking if Japanese 1 and 2 and 3 can be made into one big course, but I understand that it’s nice to break them down. But if I spend a lot of time learning Japanese 3, then a lot of review cards accumulate on Japanese 2. It would be nice for those to all be in one place. And for the streak to be my “Japanese streak” instead of my “Japanese 2” streak.
Does that make more sense?
I’m not sure how typing works for others, but when I do it there’s kind of an on-screen keyboard provided on the web page that only has a select number of characters to choose from. If the kanji isn’t an option provided to choose from then I can’t enter it.
As I’ve said before, the thing is if the kanji is what’s commonly used in Japanese then I want to learn it. When reading or vacationing, I don’t want to encounter a word that I know, but be unable to read it because I never learnt the common kanji for it.
As far as “complicated” kanji, 靴 is, in my opinion, a fair bit less complicated than other ones that have appeared in Japanese 1, such as the 験 in 体験.
The course you are doing is the old course: Japanese 2 for American English speakers (Learn Japanese on Memrise - Japanese 2 - Memrise)
I finished this course, and in the web version, it appears as complete. I do not use app, but if the app appears incomplete (even after it is finished), I believe it is one of the bug that Olaf.Rabachin listed in the Android bugs topic:
And on the review by language, on the web there is this option, but only appears for words that are in the time to be reviewed. See the following topic:
http://community.memrise.com/t/feature-suggestion/35883
I put examples of the two types of streak that Kana commented on:
Graph taken from FAQ & Help “Learning Statistics”:
https://memrise.helpshift.com/a/memrise-learn-a-new-language/?p=all&s=getting-started&f=what-are-my-learning-statistics-and-where-can-i-find-them&l=en
The Learning History Board shows all your Learning Events in the last 365 days. If you are PRO, you can look at this graph at: Log in to your account<!-- --> - Memrise
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Wow that’s really interesting. Unfortunately none of that seems to exist in my version the app. I don’t use the desktop version, so I don’t have access to any of those stats or streaks.
Also, are you saying there is a new Japanese 2 course?
I see. There is a new Japanese 2 course. It would have been better to change my existing Japanese 2 course. Now I have to either start over and do a bunch of content that I’ve already done, or miss out on the new content added to Japanese 2. I assume that Japanese 3 and up have also been changed?
For the Japanese course, Memrise added course 0 (zero), and changed course 1 & 2. For British English speakers, this was around November, but for American English speakers, I think it was this year. From course 3, at the moment, there was no change. But there is a post from KanaTsumoto saying that in the future they will be changed too.
EDIT: If you have an old course in your list, and add a new course that has the same name, you will see the 2 courses on your list, and do not miss the progress because they have different links. The 2 courses have the same figure, but the old course has a lighter color.
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In Japanese 2, Section 1, the decision to refer to 浴衣 as “summer kimono” seems odd to me. Every time I’ve seen someone discuss a yukata, it’s as a yukata, not as a “summer kimono.” While that might technically be what it is, as far as I’m aware yukata are referred to as yukata in English. Even the places you go in Japan to rent them will say “Yukata Rental.” I think it may be best to just have it say “yukata” instead of “summer kimono,” since this is more commonly what it is called, and returns more immediate results of what exactly the garment is when googled compared to “summer kimono.”
Same section, the decision to translate “昼ごはん” as “a lunch” and “晩ごはん” as “a dinner” is odd to me, similar to the translations of “a ~something~” in Japanese 1 I mentioned in an earlier post. Frankly, when I saw “a lunch” I started looking for 弁当. Again, much like when I brought these up in Japanese 1, I think the “a” in front of these should be dropped.
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@KanaTsumoto
I think the Japanese 0 hiragana cards should be adjusted slightly. The two things that are a bit confusing are that some of them look like words (so, do, to, a). It’s not immediately clearly that the English is a pronunciation and not a translation. For this exact same reason, some of the cards are trivial (i.e. the audio says あ and I choose ‘a’, so I’m basically being asked to choose the pronunciation of what I heard). Because these exercises are matching kana and pronunciation as opposed to word and meaning, I think the structure if the lesson needs to change correspondingly.
Also, it would be wonderful if the incoming lesson had about a second of buffer time before it let you select an input. I frequently double tap questions and sometimes I will incorrectly select an answer for the next lesson by accident.
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Hi @KanaTsumoto,
There is a question about Japanese for Spanish speakers that has been posted elsewhere.
@Ivan_Lohr38 reported that:
I searched the website and found the problem.
Japanese for Spanish (Spain) speakers: Learn Japanese on Memrise - Japonés 5 - Memrise
Japanese 5 - level 8:
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Thank you very much.
I can never find the appropriate forum, it’s very clunky on cellphone. And if I email memrise I’m asked to reinstall and let them know if it worked.
I hope I could just report issues directly from the app.
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@KanaTsumoto
Can the katakana ハ be pronounced as WA just like the hiragana? The translation in the new Japanese 0 for American English speakers is ha; wa, but I thought that was only for the hiragana particle.
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@KanaTsumoto
In Level 15 of Japanese 1 - Personalities (US English), the word Tall (背が高い) is not presented in the same manner as short (height) (背が低い) and causes me to mostly answer it as 高い because of the other community Japanese courses I am learning. Can you please also add to “Tall” the word (height) to eliminate any confusions.
Thank you.
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@KanaTsumoto
I am missing 1 Official Memrise Japanese course that disappeared a couple of days ago form my list of Courses. It was Japanese 1, an older course. Did Memrise remove the old courses?
Can not see the old course in the app or web version? I have the old and new version, and in the web version I continue to see the two versions of the course. I see on the home page, but on the profile page, I can only see the new version. So if someone looks at my profile, they will only be able to see the new version.
I did check it out on the Memrise website but can also only see the new Japanese courses. The old ones are now gone, at least for me.
Hi @kristoferjanke,
Apologies for my late reply!
I have made changes to the course based on your suggestion for yukata. Thank you for the suggestion.
I’m discussing the bit about the article with our English Language Specialist. The articles were put there so that word class is clearer. ‘to lunch’ would be a verb and ‘a lunch’ would be a noun. I’ll get back to you on this later though.
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Thank you for your question!
Yes, ハ can be read as ‘wa’ as well ‘ha’ since it is merely another way of writing は.
If you go back to some old literature in Japanese, you will find that everything is written in Katakana and ハ is used for は particle as well.
In today’s literature as well, there is no rule that Katakana sounds different from Hiragana and there are artist who prefer the Katakana to write so that they can bring more focus to the sound rather than the meaning. If I’m drawing a manga of robots or aliens, I would probably write the text in their speech bubbles in Katakana because I want to highlight that theysound different.
Hi @Milamy,
Sorry, I had to use the same reply window, I have a limit of replies I am allowed to send at once.
Thank you for flagging the error in the Spanish translation. My Spanish colleague will be correcting that for us later today. Thank you always!
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