Hello again,
That’s exactly what I’ve been saying: context. I really like the jumbled words feature and the short native videos too - those teach the words within a sentence (it’s a shame they don’t appear as review as well!). That’s the best way, or rather, it’s the only way for words without a literal translation or usage. I also find it much easier to learn new words when applied, rather than in abstract. And with a language as different as Japanese, I have no confidence at all in using new words I learned in isolation. And what we don’t use we tend to forget, isn’t it?
HUSBAND:
Yes, that’s what I was hinting at with mum and dad. I think we should learn the most common/formal/can’t offend anyone version as a beginner and then learn the variants (and when/how to use them) at a higher level.
Other courses do that, for example: to eat (polite) - taberu ; to eat (vulgar) - kuu and often (honorific) versions as well.
But I haven’t found any courses that teach context - one more reason why the official ones should focus on that.
I’m really enjoying the course, but there are a couple of things that have been bothering me for a while.
Certain words, phrases and symbols appear way more frequently than others. For example, in English-to-Japanese multiple choice questions, 助け, 必要 and 幸運 appear as options way too frequently. This makes words such as 選択肢 very hard to remember, since they never appear as possible answers to a question, and when those words are the focus, they can be picked out with simple deduction instead of knowing the word in question (because the other 3 are so frequent).
Also, it’s not uncommon to be presented with a complex English sentence while the choices for the answer consist of 3 simple words and one proper sentence. The answer becomes obvious without even reading the answers. This isn’t as big of a problem as the previous one though. There is a fair amount of occasions where the presented answers are sentences with a reasonable length difference and the bad questions might just be random chance. My first complaint though, happens so frequently that I’m convinced it’s a flaw in the algorithm.
I have started learning Hiragana with the help of Japanese 1 but I feel like there is something missing between course 4 (more sounds of the natives) and 5 (test run your hiragana).
There is a couple of kana in course 5 that have not been introduced in previous courses and that are not being introduced in course 5. You just get confronted with a word that has new kana or what I assume to be Kanji (e.g. Kanpai 乾杯). There also is the word kudasai ください and I am quite sure that the kana く has not been introduced in any of the courses before. Is this intended?
I am also wondering if you have to draw the letters at some point? How else are we supposed to learn how to write? Is there a special writing course of should I use a different website/app for that?
I am quite sure that these questions have been asked a 100 times before but I have not been able to find the answers. so apologies in advance.
Being relatively new to memrise, I wanted to also use this opportunity to say thank you to everyone involved making the app and the courses! I never had that much fun learning languages. Thanks a ton!
For writing, I can recommend the app Obenkyo (http://obenkyo.fr/). Also practice writing on paper now and then, but this is a convenient way to learn the stroke order.
This new version with hiragana buttons isn’t working properly: a lot of the time the extra buttons aren’t displaying (basically giving you the answer) and when you mistype the answer, the “You wrote” part isn’t displaying anything at all!
I like that when we finish typing the full correct answer, it immediately lights up, but this isn’t always working either.
The idea of having buttons isn’t bad, but I think it needs to have more extra buttons or even all of them in a fixed position, like a keyboard. I was doing the lesson on a different computer the other day so I used the buttons and it took me all the time available to find them and put them in order! However, with only a few to choose from, I often look at them to check if my answer is correct, which is kind of cheating!
Hiragana sessions are what we are working on at the moment, and we are hoping to launch them in the near future. You are right that quite a few hiragana and katakana are missing from the current course. It has been on our radar for some time and we are taking action now.
The writing sessions may take a bit more time as it requires some technical aids as well. But hopefully we will have good news soon!
I saw this issue in other topics, but the only response seemed to be to link here. I also looked in here and could not find it, but apologies if this has already been addressed.
In Japanese Level 3 lesson 38, 押す(おす)is marked as “pull (on a door)” and 引く(ひく) is marked as “push (on a door)” - I believe the translations are switched.
I just downloaded the app yesterday. I’m using this, another app, as well as just started learning hiragana on my own outside of the apps by writing them out from memory (just started learning and I’m going hard at it).
Just wanted to let you know that ri (hiragana) is being incorrectly shown in its katakana form. Meaning the app will ask for me to pick ri (hiragana), and there will be no り option. Instead I have to pick リ to answer the question correctly. I have not gotten far enough to see if the ri (katakana) is reversed in the same way.
Hi @jonbspeck37
Thank you for flagging on this, I made the correction now so once you log out and log in again (if you are on your phone), you should be able to see the update as well. Thank you!
Hi everyone,
Im new here and have just started using the app and web browser, but as I’m going through the course, I find its upped my level to 8, but obviously I’m still on level 3 of learning.Which brings me to another problem. I haven’t gone through level 2 nor can I access it. Does anyone have this issue? I tried to ignore it thinking maybe thats how the course is structured, but then it takes me to chatbot and is got Katakana and Kanji, which I haven’t even seen yet! It tells me that I should know them because I have done them in Japanese 1 level 7 and 9 or food vocabulary in Japanese 2 level 19… That’s way ahead of where I am. I tried quitting it and restarting the course again, but I’m hitting the same wall. Anyone have any similar issues?
TIA
Hi I am taking the Japanese courses, I started to take the course for english speakers and I like them a lot however there are some words/Phrases that I don’t care to learn like I’m from Ireland/UK and so since I am Mexican, and some times is really slow and tiring to translate twice what I am learning. So I discovered the Japanese for Spanish speakers they are cool but have a really big problem and I think this is a big issue that should be fix in Spanish.
While you have in the english course al the foreign words like menu, banana, etc, that are written with katakana characters in the spanish course they are written with hiragana. Also there is no katakana lessons in spanish.
Is there a way to fix the course or make them similar or do you have a plan to update the courses?
I’ve noticed while doing Japanese 1 (on the web) that whenever I get prompted for a katakana character, the selection of choices invariably contains 9 hiragana characters and the 1 correct katakana character. Recognising 1 katakana character is easy and doesn’t really test your knowledge of what specific characters are.
Is this is a known issue with Memrise or this specific course?
There is a bug in the German Japanese 1 Course, Level 6 “Menschliche Gefühle” or in the English Version “Being Human”. In the word “being dry”, the kanji is displayed correctly. In the word “being thirsty” the kanji for being dry is wrong. Should be the same kanji as before but is a different one…
I was wondering about the translation “What’s up?” for “調子わどう?”. I read somewhere that this can be translated as the casual way off saying “How’s it going?”, in the context that that person your asking is sick since the kanji for condition is in there. Just want to know why they decided to use “What’s up?” as the translation instead.
Another thing I came across was a translation that was a mix of English and hiragana. “Suzuki-Mr.はgeniusです!”: Is this right? Or am I missing something?
I am wondering what is the difference between these two below courses? I have been following the one with purple thumbnail and currently at level 3, but then I found out about the other one and so confused about which one should I follow or else?
