This is the course forum for the course JLPT N2 Vocab by BenWhately:
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Welcome to the new Course Forum. II will try to continue here the threads that were on the previous forum on problems of adding Kanji and on easily confused words.
Today I made a couple minor changes to a few words, trying to clarify near-synonyms.
One change was to add 菓子 as an accepted alternative to “sweets”, which previously had お菓子 and かし.
The other was to add “polite” in the parenthesis for the previous “They (of people)” for 方々 to distinguish it better from "They (usually male) for 彼ら
Please post here if you object and why.
Also post if you can tell me that there’s a way of creating sub-forum posts like our previous ones rather than having a lot of replies to a single post on this forum.
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Today I changed the English prompts for both of the prompts that previously were simply “Acceleration”.
For 加速 = かそくI changed the prompt to “acceleration (most common usage)”, because in www.jisho.org there were several sample sentences, which covered both changes in speed of vehicles and changes in speed of things like inflation. For 加速度＝かそくど I changed the prompt to “acceleration (physics, measurement)”. I did that because there were no sentences in www.jisho.org and one of the definitions included physics. I realise that previously one could distinguish them from parts of speech but I feel that is very subtle, especially since they both are nouns for the most common usage of the speech parts. I thought about using “two kanji” and “three kanji” but I prefer to use a difference in real meaning if it exists rather than hints. But I’m happy to entertain discussion of better methods to distinguish them.
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Hi!
Kanji are not accepted for こちら （此方） in level 37.
Also, I think that it may be nice to add more meanings to this word. Currently it only has the meaning “this person (polite)”. But it seems that more commonly used meanings are: this way, this direction; here; this one (something physically close to the speaker)
Thanks, I fixed it. It’s actually in the database twice. I made sure the kanji was an alternate for both. こっち is in the database with the clue of “this way” and has both the kanji and the hiragana for 此方 as alternates. こっち also has a lot of meanings as English alternates, including the ones you mention. I am reluctant to delete or change one of the two こちら because the mems won’t match it any more, so I’m leaving them as is.
Thank you.
Okay, I will just keep in mind the other translations then.
気温 and 温度 were both in the database as “temperature”. I can’t seem to see much difference in the sentences, but www.jisho.org had the definition for 気温 as (atmospheric) temperature. So I added that to the definition, and also added (not 気温) for 温I度.
I’ve made a few small changes in the last week or so that I forgot to include here. Today I made こう (in this way, thus, such) and こうして (thus, in this way) to be alternates for each other. I also added the qualifiers (one kanji) and (two kanji) to the prompts “gun” for 銃＝じゅう and 鉄砲＝てっぽう, respectively. Finally, I added (not 本屋）for the prompt “bookshop”, which wants the answer 書店. 本屋 was not in the database, but it was the first word that came to my mind, and it means the same thing, so I thought it would be helpful. As usual, if you think of a better way to distinguish any of these, please let me know.
Hello ! i first want to thank you for this awesome course ! Every time i learn a word i reading it in my light novels, best feeling ever!
Also, i also want to propose an update to the course. When we do reviews we only have the word in kana, but most of times those words are in kanji. So it may be better to have the word in kana AND kanji everywhere, in learning and review tests. For people learning kanji it’s hiting two birds with one stone (pro citation).
Thanks again and sorry for my poor English.
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Thanks. I agree with you. However, I don’t know how to change it. If you or somebody else can tell me how to do that, I will do it. A couple years ago Moonglum and Monzen spent a huge amount of time going through all the words and adding Kanji to the “alternate words” list so that you could test yourself on the Kanji by typing them in during the normal tests, and try to learn the Kanji that way. But in the learning phase, the program doesn’t show the alternate words so it doesn’t help with that. I think perhaps Memrise staff could change the whole program so people could see the other columns when they’re learning it, but you’d have to ask a different forum for that.
As I said above, if there is a way to do it I’d love to hear about it.
Also, if you want a course that asks you to translate Kanji to Kana, you could use JLPT N2 Readings.
Just added clarifications to:
Capital: I couldn’t distinguish these two by meaning so I changed them this way:
首都＝しゅと：added (two kanji)
都＝みやこ: added (one kanji)
rope: Again, I couldn’t distinguish the meanings, although perhaps 綱 is a more substantial rope, like a cable. But the sentences in jisho.org seemed to be quite similar so I did the following:
縄＝なわ: added (not 綱)
綱＝つな added (not 縄)
Constantly: Again added
常に＝つねに＝(not 絶えず)
絶えず＝たえず＝(not 常に)
Again, if anybody can figure out a better way to distinguish any of these, please let me know.
Today I disambiguated the two prompts of “Prime Minister” to
Prime Minister (4 Kanji) for 総理大臣＝そうりだいじん
Prime Minister (2 Kanji) for 首相＝しゅしょう
These two words were both prompted by the same word, “Underwear”.
肌着＝はだぎ
下着＝したぎ
It seems that there may be a slight preference for 肌着 to be used for an undershirt, while 下着 is used for underpants, from looking at the sentences in www.jisho.org. However, there are two nearly identical sentences translated with undershirt for both of them, so I am going to use the “not x” way of distinguishing unless somebody can tell me they’ve heard from a Japanese native speaker that there’s a real distinction. I would prefer to learn the real distinctions, but I think it’s better not to learn a distinction than to learn it wrong.
For 常に versus 絶えずに how about something like:
常に constantly (normally)
絶えずに constantly (ceaselessly)
I think ‘ceaselessly’ might help because it reminds you of the negative ず in 絶えず, and one translation of 絶える is ‘cease’. And then, 常に does have more of a sense of typically or normally doing something, hence the other suggestion.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve changed them to
常に constantly (always, normally)
絶えずに constantly (ceaselessly)
Since jisho had constantly, always as its definition.
Hello.
Both level 62 倍 and level 33 ダブル have the same prompt “double” which creates an ambiguous question. I suggest changing ダブル to “double (katakana)” like other katakana words.
Thanks for the course by the way it’s really useful.
Thanks for the note. I’ve fixed it like you suggested.
Today I changed the prompts of “limit” for 限界 and 限度 to limit (not x) where x is the wrong answer. Happy to entertain better distinctions if anybody knows of one.
More duplicate prompts removed today: “Crime” was changed to “Crime, sin (one kanji)” for 罪, and to "crime (two kanji) for 寒剤 .
The two forms of ink, インキ and インク are alternates for each other in all four of their appearance in the database.
I also disambiguated the two words with prompts of “majority” to:
過半数=majority (three kanji)
大半=majority, mostly, generally (two kanji)