They aren’t TOO common, but I’ve been running across a good few of these, which are annoying. The bottom should be translated as コーヒーは私のお気に入りの飲み物です、but is translated in hiragana instead, for some reason. Having the bottom in kanji is literally invaluable to me, so I’d appreciate it if this kind of thing was kept to a minimum. 
“breakfast” somehow got translated as “lunch” in the bottom translation. It should be 朝食(choushoku) rather than 昼食(chuushoku).
Hi relyat08,
Thank you for the screenshot! I’m looking at the said item but it appears correctly on my side. Can you try logging out and logging in again?
Hi relyat08,
Thank you for the screenshot. Yes I understand that it’s absolutely essential for the majority of our users that attributes appear correctly in Kanji/Hiragana/Katakana. This is now fixed 
Hi relyat08,
Thanks for the screenshot (which is now corrected, by the way).
Unfortunately we can’t disable the kanji in little box aka attributes. If I disable it it will be invisible for all users, and many people like having that feature.
Making kanji being accepted as correct answers means going through all the relevant items and adding kanji versions as alternatives. I don’t have the resource for it right now, I’m afraid 
But we are developing 2 new versions of this course (1) all in romaji and (2) kanji, hiragana and katakana mix (the ‘real’ Japanese). So I hope once those are rolled out we can meet the demands of the high achievers like yourself. Thanks!
Hi BigBadUrsa,
Thank you for your comments in the forum. I must admit there are a lot inconsistencies in the course as you’ve pointed out, especially with pro-drop items.
The truth of the matter is, the pro-drop situations ARE in fact very random and inconsistent in conversations. I tried to reflect that in the course as much as as possible, which basically just ended up confusing you all. What I’m going to attempt to do now is that assume that in all situations, the person being addressed is ‘YOU’ unless otherwise specified. Let’s see if this makes things less confusing for the users, and if they don’t, I will need your help again in coming up with ways to make the course better! Many thanks for the input.
Hi BinaryToast,
Thank you for your feedback and that’s a super cute profile pic!
I’m very to happy to get various feedback about the item ちょうしはどう and just of the course overall. As I’m sure you can imagine no language learning course is perfect in its first edition, and all the opinions and discussions here only contribute to making the course better and better!
Indeed ちょうしはどう？ is a non-formal 'what’s up? ‘hey!’ in my opinion. Sure it’s not used as often as hello or goodbye, but it’s definitely an useful phrase to learn (also if otherwise, it wouldn’t be there to begin with). I will be keeping it for now, with a note mem. I hope this clarifies things more for the prospective learners of the level.
This is the mem I’ve created. Yes… that dog is my definition of ‘casual’ 
If you have better images or suggestions in mind please feel free to add one in the course.
1 Like
This is definitely the most casual dog I’ve ever seen, thumbs up! 
No worries, I figured it was a bit of a long shot. The program is still invaluable to me, in general, so it’s not a huge deal. Looking forward to whatever upgrades you guys put out. I’m sure it’s a very time intensive job. Good work! お疲れ様！
1 Like
Thanks for the response. I am appreciating the work you doing. It would be nice if there was a “report an error” button in the quiz so to streamline all this memrise-find-report routine. It would remove the cost of going to forum and reporting it, which stops many people from reporting. Something like a very simple bug tracking.
What I’m going to attempt to do now is that assume that in all situations, the person being addressed is ‘YOU’
This certainly a solution. My own idea is a bit more complicated but I will share it any way:
Japanese is a contextual language, that means that is different from most of what any western language has to offer. It would be nice to just have a grammar “quiz” like one of the first ones unlocked, at least before sentences that will explain the zero pronoun and that it is hidden from sentence because people assume it implicitly.
は marks change of the topic, which often not the grammatical subject, and is literally traduced as "as four X". Once introduced the reference is completely hidden from sentences but implied by every speaker.
Choose sentences which are introducing topic:
犬は好きです。猫が可愛いです。ジョンがスザン好きです。元気です。
Something similar for translation:
私は好きです
I like. As for me, [I] like. I am the “liking” incarnate.
This will get people to understand what is this about, something that many books reportedly still miss. And I think it will save people a lot of headache.
Again, thanks for you good work.
P.S. I tried to only transmit the general idea with my examples.
1 Like
Regarding your (hallgat89) first point, “市-cloth AND 市-market; city I think they are the same, and causes confusion”
I was wondering if this was a mistake so I checked and actually, there are two separate kanji.
Level 8 has 市 market; city
Level 20 has 巾 cloth
If you compare the 市 and 巾, I hope you will be able to see the difference.
1 Like
I did notice while looking at the kanji in Japanese 2 that most are ‘full’ kanji (like 言 or 田), some of which are also used as radicals. But in addition, a few items are are radicals that are not used (or are very marginally used) as kanji on their own, such as 广 (Lev8), 彳 (Lev2), 开 (Lev20). I guess that the approach is to familiarise learners with the meanings of kanji and kanji components. I do think, however, that it may be misleading not to say clearly in the definitions for radicals that they are radicals (this is done for 广 but not the others, I think).
Actually, to be honest if I can make one further comment I think 开 is a rather strange thing to include anyway. Unlike 彳, which at least is part of several common kanji, is 开 used in any kanji except 開? (I couldn’t think of any.)
Hi j21,
Thank you for your comment! You’re absolutely right, some Kanji are introduced as ‘full kanji’ and some just as radicals, in aim of familiarising the users with the concept that the kanji are made up up of different components.
I do think, however, that it may be misleading not to say clearly in the definitions for radicals that they are radicals (this is done for 广 but not the others, I think).
I absolutely agree with you on this. I’m going to add (radical) to those to make sure people understand that these aren’t full kanji.
Regarding 开 (level 20), I came to the realization that 开 is not considered a radical or kanji in Japanese. Basically the Kanji levels in Japanese 1, 2 and 3, are ‘borrowed’ from the official Chinese courses, which led to this mistake. In short, 开 is a kanji in Chinese that means ‘open’ but not in Japanese, and I’m going to delete this item now.
Thanks again for your input and for pointing out the mistake!
2 Likes
Hi all!
This afternoon I’m going to a meeting where we talk about new courses/new features/new functions we might want to implement in the future.
There have been so many good feedback surrounding this topic in the past (course with Kanji strokes, hiragana strokes) but if you have any more suggestions and or ideas, please let me know!
Thanks!
If there is one thing I really, really would love is that Memrise doesn’t care about the order answers are typed in. If a word says “cookie; tasty treat” (I can’t think of an actual example right now) and I type in “tasty treat; cookie” (or select them in one of the multiple choice sections) Memrise thinks the answer is wrong. That’s a teeny tiny bit annoying I dare say. 
Eidt: Oh and I guess this is general feedback, so I suppose you wanted Japanese specific feedback: teach and use Katakana when appropriate! I had to look up all the Hiragana words I learned that are actually usually written in Katakana, and now I kind of learned them twice… I know most words are actually written in Kanji and I have to “learn them twice” anyway, but Katakana isn’t even mentioned in the current courses and it appears it is rather vital to know to actually read Japanese.
Hi BinaryToast,
Thanks for the comment! The first issue can be resolved by me adding all combinations as alternatives. It will be in my next week’s goal.
For the second part, we are going to update the Japanese course and replace it with two new versions by the end of the month:
- Japanese course with everything in Romaji (for people who don’t really want to learn script, and just want to be able to speak)
- Japanese course with Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji
This should solve the issue for so many of you! You can move on to the second course as soon as it’s rolled out.
1 Like
That sounds brilliant, looking forward to 2) already! Cheers!
Hi BigBadUrsa,
Thank you for elaborating your point and providing me with examples. It is very helpful.
The idea of having a course or a level focusing on the grammar has been discussed extensively within Memrise, but it is slightly contradictory to the lexical approach. However you’re right that because it’s so different from the Western languages, that some sort of explanation will really help the users. I have to be honest with you though that currently there are no plans for making grammar-centered course.
For the time being, what I suggest you and anyone else on this forum with deeper understanding of the language to do, is to create a note mem for items you think that require extra information. I will do my best too, but I think a collaboration can make a very big difference for novice learners. For example, the example you’ve given there will be a great note mem in the relevant items. (Please excuse me if you’re already doing it).
I’m sorry for not being able to provide a very useful answer/solution to the issue. Just to give you heads up at the end of the month there will be two Japanese courses 1) Japanese (romaji only) and 2) Japanese (kanji, hiragana and katakana), and eventually all users of the current Japanese 1-3 will be expected to chose one of them.
Memrise Japanese twitter account is now active!
https://twitter.com/memrisejapan
I tweet in English and in Japanese (depending on the topic).
1 Like