“meet the natives”. Entschuldigung, aber welches “Deutsch above”???
also, one has to give both/all alternatives, and only in the order given by memrise:
also these entries are very mysterious (a Herr is not a “Junge”, “Frau” not a"Mädchen" etc - you mean before the marriage or what? if the ending is always “san”, what is the point???)
里保さん
Ms. Riho (girl’s name)
翔さん
Mr. Sho (boy’s name)
里保さん
Frau Riho (Mädchenname)
翔さん
Herr Sho (Jungenname)
The 「~さん」 suffix doesn’t differentiate by gender nor marital status. The various suffixes are mostly used to express different levels of respect towards the recipient, or to express the relative social status between the speaker and the recipient. You can imagine 「~さん」 as comparable to the polite German “Sie”, kind of a “default suffix”. You use it with people you don’t know and/or have no specific social relationship with.
Another suffix would be 「~ちゃん」, for example. 「~ちゃん」 expresses that either the recipient’s social status is lower than your own, or that you are close enough that you don’t have to acknowledge the recipient’s status. You could use it to address small children or young girls, or close friends or lovers. If you use 「~ちゃん」 to address somebody who were entitled to your respect, it can be seen as an insult (for example, adressing a coworker or a sales clerk with 「~ちゃん」).
Another example could be 「~くん」. You use it with somebody who’s roughly on you social “level” and who you are at least somewhat familiar with. It is used with young boys and young men, but also among coworkers or not-so-close friends.
You also often use professions, titles, positions and the like as suffixes. 「翔先生」 (Shou-sensei) would address Shou as a teacher or master of something (in school, in arts, in a sport or such). 「翔社長」 would address Shou as a company president, director, manager or the like - maybe used by the workers he supervises. Both examples would probably be used with the surname, not the given name, but I wanted to use the names known from the examples.
The difference between “Herr” and “Junge” and between “Frau” and “Mädchen” probably stems from the German language. We just don’t use “Herrenname”, “Damenname” etc. I also very rarely hear “Männername” or “Frauenname”, if at all. In our culture, we get our (given) name as children and don’t change it when we enter adulthood. So we refer to them as “Jungenname” or “Mädchenname”.
Hi @Hydroptere,
Thank you for this, we’re fixing the algorithm to be more flexible with the marking! Hope this fix will be complete very soon for you!
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Hi @Hydroptere,
Thank you for your question. Also, thank you @henning.kockerbeck for fiving a very detailed and accurate answer.
Basically, what @henning.kockerbeck said is right. I would add that addressing someone in Japanese without any title is only done between very intimate relationships; family, close friends, or lovers.
We add “〜さん” to show respect to the other person, and forgetting to do that can be very rude in some cases.
We do not have common titles to indicate the marital status or gender of the person. Titles are there more to indicate the social relationship to that person you are addressing… Is she someone you should pay respect to? （〜さん）Is she your cousin you grew up with? （〜ちゃん） Is she a colleague who works under you? （〜くん）
I did give some examples there, but I think it is safe to say that 〜さん should be used as a default in most cases to be safe.
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気分が悪い heißt “sich schlecht/unwohl fühlen” (https://www.wadoku.de/entry/view/3967726)
dachte, “krank” heißt “病気の”? (Japanisch 1)
warum wird Apfel in Hiragana gegeben? (i.e. warum fehlt 苹果 ???) (Japanisch 1)
Hello @Hydroptere,
Thank you for your question! Yes, the Japanese phrase 気分が悪い has quite a broad usage; from “I’m feeling unwell” to “I’m sick, I need to see a doctor”. I’ve asked our German Specialist to add the former as a translation to the course. I think it is useful to know that Japanese people tend to understate things, so if they say “気分が悪いです”, it is quite possible that person is seriously ill!haha
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warum wird Apfel in Hiragana gegeben? (i.e. warum fehlt 苹果 ???) (Japanisch 1)
Hi again @Hydroptere
Thank you for this question also 
苹果 would be Chinese actually. We do have 林檎 as Japanese Kanji, but the word is more commonly written in hiragana (りんご). We don’t necessarily always use Kanji in Japanese, so you will have to check which (hiragana/kanji) is commonly used for each word one by one.
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thanks
btw
悲しんでいます is for “kanashin de imasu” - what the voice in “Japanisch 1” is actually saying (this was correct until yesterday???, but I start to be unsure; wadoku gives also "悲しんで for “traurig”, i.e. “sad”)
today: 悲しいです , although the voice still utters “kanashin de imasu”
many thanks
Hi @Hydroptere
Yes, good catch! I was tweaking something there, but it should be back now! Thank you!
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sorry for the question, but why is the t-form/plain given for “wissen, kennen” - 知っています ? the chace for a German speaker to use Japanesely on with “close friends, relatives, etc” is not that big…
just asking
Hi @Hydroptere,
I’m sorry for my late reply!
Could you explain again your question? I’m not sure if I understood.
Do you mean you feel that either “wissen, kinnen” or "知っています” is taking a specific politeness/casualness level?
Kana
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well, I don’t remember that one anymore, sorry… really sorry
another issue: I always get this wrong それは素敵です= das ist nett (Japanisch 2)… because “nett” is maybe not the best German translation for 素敵
素敵 = großartig; herrlich; fabelhaft; fantastisch; prima; wunderbar; toll (wadoku.de)// lovely; dreamy; beautiful; great; fantastic; superb; cool; capital (jisho.org)
・also, for 幸運を祈ります maybe sth like “wünsche viel Glück” would be a more sutiable translation? (祈り gets completely lost in “viel Glück”…)
・出身 - the translation “aus(einem Ort)” is very nice, in the sense is easy to understand its use afterwards, but 出身 means “Herkunft, Abstammung”
many thanks
Hi @Hydroptere,
Thank you for your comments and all your suggestions!
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What we did here was to avoid using translations that could be understood as translations for きれいです、すごい！、最高です. If you try to understand ist nett as a positive term instead of a nuetral or sarcastic one, would that work for you?
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I guess we wanted to teach this item as a phrase rather than a sentence, and that’s why it’s translated like that. To be honest, a complete equivalent of “Good luck” or “viel Glück” would be "グッドラック”…
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We’ve adopted your idea for the last one! Thank you for the great suggestion!
Kana
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There are two errors in the German course “Japanisch 5”.
In level 6 “Anführer; Anführerin” (指導者) has the sound of “Soldat; Soldatin” (兵士).
And in level 10 the translations of タグ and タグ付けします are switched.
タグ should be “Markierung (auf Facebook etc.)” and タグ付けします “markieren (auf Facebook etc.); taggen”.
Is anyone here who can change this?
Japanisch 2 Hilfe: 助け
Japanisch 4 Hilfe: 手伝い
vielen Dank
Hi, I already reported a bug on one of the chats. Now again, I am not sure how to assemble this sentence in a way that pleases the robot (screenshot attached). Could someone please suggest an answer, so that I can try it out?
Thanks!
Sorry for bothering, I found the solution and after much Googling was able to finish the chat. 