Pretty sure you can use hiragana for these, even though the answers are listed in romaji?
Edit: My mistake, it seems the course I’m doing has them listed in hiragana now. This might be the UK vs US thing I’ve seen pop up? Sorry for any confusion!
I’m doing Japanese I lesson 3, and I keep being asked to choose between ‘Goodbye’ & ‘Goodbye’ when asked what ‘Sayounara’ means, one of them being considered wrong. It’s pure chance if I manage to get it right. Memrise currently believes I have trouble with the word. I’m sorry if this isn’t the right place for this post—I’m not quite sure where to report it.
You’ve come to the right place 
In Japanese 2, Level 29, the kanji for “water” is reintroduced, but it has a small bracketed kanji next to it:
水 (氵)
What does this indicate? I also noticed this when the kanji for “hand” was introduced, but didn’t think much of it since it looked similar to the other kanji:
手（扌）
I think those things in the brackets are “radicals”. They make up more complex kanji. The 水 appears in a lot of kanji, but not in this form, just as like those small strokes (氵). I think the Kanji for “slippery” contains the exact radical: 滑る (すべる)。
Thank you. 
Also a slight correction to what I wrote above: by ‘lesson 3’ I meant ‘level 3’.
@McFadge, to answer your question about the の particle in the nut allergy sentence: possession is only one of several uses for の. In your example sentence it’s used to link a noun (nut), used as an adjective, to another noun (allergy), which it modifies or describes. (This is actually a simplified version of a fuller explanation involving ‘noun phrases’ - in this case “nut” and “allergy” are simple one-word noun phrases.)
You didn’t ask, but I have to say that I was very surprised to see that example sentence. First, if the only use you’ve been taught for の is possession, it’s a poor example. Second, the words “nut” and “allergy” would never be written in hiragana, only katakana; and in fact “nut allergy” is written in katakana without the ノ (katakana の). Besides being incorrect, using words that should be written in katakana in example sentences and writing them in hiragana, also seems misleading and counterproductive for students. Third, the sentence as written actually translates as “He is a nut allergy.” (AはBです = A is B.) A grammatically correct way of saying “He has a nut allergy.” is かれはナッツ・アレルギーがあります。(AはBがある = A has B.) ある is commonly translated as “to be” or “to exist”, but it also means (among several other things) “to have”. I hope this example sentence is an exception in your course!
@BJohnsen, the Memrise course doesn’t teach grammar, so thank you for the informative response! There’s also no katakana taught in the course, everything is hiragana with some kanji taught independently (not in sentences), though I think it accepts katakana where appropriate.
The noun-adjective explanation of の may help clear up another sentence in the course:
わたしはそのみどりのすかーとがほしいです
I couldn’t reason about the の after みどり before, but this grammar rule seems like it may fit? I really need to dive into Tae Kim’s guide soon 
Hi guys!
I hope you’re all well! So the Japanese 1-3 are finally ready (it’s been a long wait… I know). Thanks for your patience. They are generally the same as the existing courses but the following have been improved:
Japanese 1-3
- Katakana, kanji (with audio) and hiragana
- MC duplicate issue resolved (you don’t have to gamble on your answers)
- verb forms inconsistencies fixed
- hiragana level and katakana level
http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/japanese-4/
Japanese (no script) 1-3
- Same as Japanese 1-3, except that there is no Japanese writing whatsoever
- Everything is written in romaji
http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/romaji/
They are currently only available for English (British) speakers but will be available for the following language speakers soon: German, French, Italian, Spanish (Spain), Korean, Russian, Portuguese (Brazil) and Turkish.
The learners of the current Japanese courses can continue on the existing courses if they wish to.
Please let me know if you have any questions! Thanks!
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@McFadge, you are correct about the の in that sentence. Interestingly, in English “green” can be a noun, verb or adjective, but in Japanese it’s always a noun.
Agree with you about the grammar. It’s hard to get very far in Japanese without some understanding of the grammar.
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Exciting! Congratulations to you and the team for putting these new courses together. I just finished the old Japanese 2 and am looking forward to continue!
Edit: Phew, looking at some of this Kanji I might need to go back through the courses to pick it up.
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Hi McFadge,
Thanks!
Yes I understand that the kanji can look a little overwhelming but trust me, it’s better for you this way in a long run! (especially when visiting Japan). Also the furigana should help you too.
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Hi,
Another update on the full script/romaji courses, the new versions are now available for the following language speakers:
Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Turkish, Russian, Italian, German, Korean, Chinese (traditional), Chinese (simplified), and French!
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Great, the new courses are there I’m looking forward to using them
@McFadge I’ve recently found that writing kanji helps me a great deal to remember them. So, even if you don’t intent to start practice writing to a serious degree yet, I’d recommend to look up the stroke order of a kanji you’re learning and write it down a dozen times or so.
You can look up the stroke order for example at Jisho. A search for “kanji practice sheet” or something similar with your web search engine of choice should give you practice sheets to print out, like this one, these or these. Practice sheets come in multiple variants, with pre-printed kanji to trace or blank, in different sizes etc., so just choose whichever works best for you.
So I’ve gone back to Japanese 1 in the new courses to get exposed to the Kanji, and thought I’d bring up a couple of things I’ve noticed so far:
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Some questions ask to to select/type the kanji of the given word/sentence, when hiragana is expected:
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The words with semicolons expect a (for lack of the correct word) “English” semicolon, not accepting the full width Japanese semicolon. So “;” is correct while “；” is not. This means you need to swap back to English input halfway through, then back to Japanese again to type the full answer
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In the new Japanese 1, Level 5, I got a “Type what you hear” question for the topic particle, は. However, if you listen to it you’d really hear わ. I only got this correct because I knew it was in the current selection of words, but could see this being confusing later on, or for others.
Regarding your first point, I’ve come across some phrases that are usually written with kana (hiragana or katakana) alone, even though there is a “kanji version”. 「こんにちは」 is one of those. So I’d reckon it’s part of the exercise to remember that 「こんにちは」 isn’t usually spelled with kanji, even though it’s asking for kanji. Also, I’m not sure how to reformulate the question. “Select the correct Japanese (Kanji; or Kana when appropriate) for the English above”? 
Regarding your second point, maybe you can change the semicolon that get’s inserted in the settings of your IME? I haven’t run into that problem so far, neither with Anthy nor with Mozc.
Regarding your third point, that actually is correct. There are three hiragana that are pronounced differently when used as a particle. Those are 「は」 (pronounced as “wa” instead of “ha”), 「を」 (pronounced as “o” instead of “wo”) and 「へ」 (pronounced as “e” instead of “he”). That’s why you spell 「こんにちは」 and not 「こんにちわ」. But I agree with you that it’s a problem when a “Type what you hear” exercise says “wa”, and you can’t tell whether it means the kanji 「わ」 or the particle 「～は」.
Hello!
Thank you for super quick feedback and for providing screenshots (it’s always useful!), this was an unforeseen issue but is now fixed.
Regarding @henning.kockerbeck’s point about listening test, this is a little more complicated. I guess what I can do is to have audio that says he/e, but I need to think about it a little bit more. Thanks!
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Thank you very much for all the hard work that went into finally releasing this new course!
While it will make it a little bit harder, I am glad that you added Kanji where appropriate. I previously completed the Japanese 1 course and now I am going back to complete the new Japanese 1, except using the ignore feature on everything that is not written in Kanji (and perhaps some of the vocab that is katakana).
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Thank you so much for releasing the new courses! I had just finished the old lesson 1 and I had sat down at the computer with intentions of flying through the new lesson 1. The addition of new kanji put a wrench in that plan, but I appreciate learning these common words the right way early on.
Once again, many thanks.
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Something else I’ve noticed is with regards to not accepting hiragana answers where kanji is required. When you’re translating an English “word”, you get a message saying that you need to type in the kanji, not the furigana, and the text disappears. If you type only hiragana for a “Type what you hear” question though, the text disappears but there’s no error message. It’d also be nice if it was possible for the text to not be removed, that way you can adjust the sentence accordingly as opposed to typing out the whole thing again.
Oh, also for Mr./Mrs. Sho in , I found I needed to use “しょう” to find the correct kanji. I’m not sure if other people will experience this as well, but if so, I wonder if it could be changed to Mr./Mrs. Shou? I looked around online found しょう to be the reading.
It’s been funny having the names actually, because I’m guessing they’re not really recognised by systems as common “words” a lot of the time. For instance, I had to go digging for a way to make りほ to 里保 for 里保さん on my system. Started off by having to convert り and ほ individually, but now have it set up to automatically consider that kanji. I assume this is good experience for being out in the real world and not knowing what kanji to use in people’s names!
Hi McFadge,
Thanks for your input!
The typing test issue is unfortunately not something I can fix quickly. What I can tell you is you will never be asked to answer anything in furigana. Furigana in this course is purely to aid people who are not too confident with kanji, You will always be required to type in the ‘appropriate’ type of script, ie katakana for borrowed words.
Regarding names, romaji is a little funny because there are different methods of writing. To write SHOU would be correct in terms of typing, but not in real life. If you’re interested, I suggest you read about different types of romaji.
Finally, the name… it was my personal decision. I could have kept everything in Hiragana to make things easier for people, but I thought… well, people will (almost always) have their names in kanji, so why not present it like it is in real life? In Japan, asking someone how their name is written in Kanji is a common topic for people, especially when meeting for the first time. For example, people might ask me ‘how is Mariko written in Kanji?’ to which I will answer MA is like hemp, RI is like village, and ko like child
Semi colon issue is fixed. you can now type です；ます and use Japanese semi colon in the similar instances.
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