[Course Forum] Japanese 1-7 by Memrise

Official Memrise Courses Japanese
,
564

Hi,
I enjoyed the new (using kanji) Japanese 1-3 very much. Actually I have gone through them twice already. I found some problems but they are not major and I hesitate to point them out. Here are some of them. The first character in "一キロ” (one kilo) is number one but when I type in "一キロ” correctly, the course won’t accept it as a correct answer. Then I type in the symbol hyphen “-” instead of a number one (kanji) the course accepts it as a right answer.

Another one is 空港便 and 航空便 are being used interchangably. The audio is the former but when you answer the question you need to use the latter. By the way, I do not know if they are both the same.

I am looking forward to studying the Japanese 4,5,6,7 (using kanji). Are they ready yet? By they way, if you want me to, I can go through Japanese 3 again and give you screen shots of some possible problems.

Here again, thank you very much for your hard work. I have learned a lot from your courses.

Wongjohnyc

1 Like
565

Hello!

I’m so glad to hear that the you like the new versions of the courses. A lot of effort had gone into it and to hear that it’s helpful puts a smile on my face :slight_smile: I’ve corrected the mistake you pointed out, the 一キロ and 空港便。They were both typos. If you can’t see the changes being reflected, please log out first and log back in.

As for the Japanese 4-7, I can’t really tell you when they’re going to be released yet. I’m afraid it’s not in the plans for the immediate future. @rinnymcphee

566

As some others have stated, the new Japanese 1-3 courses are much better, but I didn’t even know they existed because they do not show up in the android version of the phone app, only the old versions with just hirigana. I had to add them on the website. A little disappointed that i could have spent the last couple months learning with the good versions instead of the old ones.

567

hi @nbren11 actually the new courses do show up on app. you just need to refresh it by logging in and out if you have the newest version of memrise installed

Screenshot_2017-04-14-08-31-13.jpg1080×1920 337 KB

Screenshot_2017-04-14-08-36-54.jpg1080×1920 577 KB

568

New Kanji Japanese 2 lesson 6 “同じ” has female audio that doesn’t match during review.

569

Hello, thanks for the course it’s great!
I have two simple questions so far:

  1. Why is the kanji for KAWAITE different in 乾いています and in 喉が渇いています ?
  2. Does 好きです apply only to food, or also to persons, animals, countries, books… ?
    Thanks for your answers. Have a great day !
1 Like
570

The following is to the best of my knowledge, so anybody feel free to correct me if I’m wrong :slight_smile:

If I were mean, I’d say your first question is wrong :wink: There’s no such thing as “a kanji for a reading”. There are roughly 100 sounds in the Japanese language (unvoiced, voiced etc.). On the other hand, there are more than 2.000 commonly used kanji, and more than 40.000 kanji overall. So you just can’t have a separate sound for each kanji. Many times you’ll find kanji that are read identically. For example, 「工」 and 「口」 can both be read 「こう」.

To make things even more complicated, many kanji have more than one reading. 「工」 can be read as 「こう」 or 「く」, depending on which word the kanji’s in. 「口」 can be read as 「こう」 or 「く」 or 「くち」.

To come back to your question, 「乾」 and 「渇」 are different kanji with related meanings that happen to have the same reading, too. The verb 「渇く」 means, according to Jisho.org, “to be thirsty” or “to thirst, to crave for something”. The verb 「乾く」 means, according to Jisho.org, “to get dry”. Both are read as 「かわく」.

So 「喉が渇いています」 and 「喉が乾いています」 both mean something like “(my) throat is dry” or “(my) throat is thirsty”, or, as we would say in English, “(I’m) thirsty” or “being thirsty”. And they happen to be read exactly the same.

But since 「乾いています」 is taught in the course as “to be dry” and according to Jisho.org 「喉が乾く」 is a (standing?) phrase for “being thirsty”, it might be a good idea to use 「喉が乾いています」 in the course. That would also match the principle we’ve seen with 「お腹」 and 「お腹が空いてます」. What do you think, @MarikoMiz?

And concerning the second question, 「好きです」 can used to express that one likes anything or anybody, not just food. Judging by the manga and anime I’ve read or seen, this phrase is actually used to confess your feelings to somebody (though I’m not sure if in this case the relatively formal 「～です」 form would be used).

4 Likes
571

henning.kockerbeck
ありがとうございました
You made things clear to me.

572

MarikoMiz,

image.jpg1920×1080 559 KB

The audio is わたしたちはこんやにほんへとばなくてはいけません
But written Japanese is 私達は今夜日本へ飛ばなければいけません
とばなくてはいけません and 飛ばなければいけません may mean samething but don’t sound the same.

573

MarikoMiz、

image.jpg1920×1080 699 KB

The audio is びでおげーむ、but the written answer has to be てれびげーむ

574

Hello!

I wanted to point out that just like CamJN (on Feb 26th and Apr 15th), and Taelien_52 (on Mar 26th), I too have had the audio for 「同じ」 being 「マリアさんはにほんごがじょうずです」, and this is not just in the middle of an exercise, but on the “screen” that introduces the word. (The one in which the seed is dropped.)

Has this simply been missed several times, or has it been difficult to fix it?

575

MarikoMiz,

image.jpg1920×1080 575 KB

My mum also wants a watch = 私のお母さんも時計を欲しがっています
But you have some extra japanese characters “測ります”, please see attached screen shot.

576

Besides the mention by wongjohnyc, in Japanese 3 level 15,

私の子供達はこれ以上テレビゲームは必要ありません

Translation says video game instead of television game.

Also the one above about the watch, besides the random hakarimasu, the male audio, romaji and furigana use “ga” instead of “wo” to refer to tokei.

577

This is probably a really basic question, sorry…

I have learnt some phrases that I think use some kanji instead of hiragana, for example 調子はどう? (chōshi wa dō?`)

I’m mainly using the Android app but also sometimes the desktop site, and I’m wondering how I type the above on a keyboard? So far I have been typing the romaji and it converts to the hiragana, but I can’t work out how to type the kanji.

578

To type the hiragana, you’re probably using an IME like Anthy or Mozc. This IME should also allow you to convert the hiragana you typed into kanji. In Anthy and Mozc you do this with the SPACE key. To find out how to do it with the IME your using, you might need to consult the IME’s documentation.

In most cases, the IME should offer you multiple kanji that fit your hiragana input to choose from. As I explained above, one kanji can have multiple readings, and multiple kanji can have the same reading. So, for example, if you type 「こう」, the IME has to “guess” whether you mean the kanji 「工」 or 「口」 or … So it offers you its best “guess” (for example, which of the possible kanji you chose last time), followed by a handful or sometimes dozens of other kanji that also have that reading.

As an example, if I type (using Anthy)

ちょうし SPACE はどう

I’m getting

調子はどう

As you see, you don’t have to convert every kanji separately. But an IME’s ability to “understand” the hiragana input is limited. So, if tried to convert the above all at once with

ちょうしはどう SPACE

I get

調子波動

But, for example,

おなかがすいています SPACE

gets correctly converted to

お腹が空いています

It’s a matter of experience to judge what “portion” you can reasonable convert at once.

579

Thanks henning.kockerbeck, that makes sense. I think I might have been typing the romaji incorrectly!

580

New Kanji Japanese 2 lesson 31, 何時にですか？ has audio without the に.

Also can someone tell me what the difference is between パンツ and 下着? I thought that b/c British English is used, パンツ (with english: pants) would mean underwear, but then 下着 got introduced as underwear. But since we already learned ズボン as trousers which definitely means pants I’m confused what “pants” means here.

And can we get a bit more info on why 明るい色 replaced うすい for light colour and 暗い色 replaced こい for dark colour?

581

Another kanji typing question:

Why is 孫 Sho (as in Mr. Sho and pronounced ‘Sho’), typed in romaji as ‘mago’ (まご)?

582

Japanese kanji have different readings. Shou and mayo are 2 of 孫’s readings.
Another example: 春日is read as Haruhi AND Kasuga, no the popular Japanese names.
(A little confusing I know, but not as big of an issue as you might think)

583

As for the colors, I think the new version literally means a bright and dark color, while if you want to say light/dark blue you still need to use usuiao/koiao. Why this was changed I don’t know. Maybe Mariko can confirm?