[Course Forum] JLPT N5 Vocab/Readings by JLPTBootCamp

This is the forum for both N5 courses:

The original:

Another version of the same course that drills the reading of the kanji:

Most users prefer the readings course.

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@jlptbootcamp
Hi thank you for the extremely helpful course.
There’s a word in level 34 - coffee lounge.
The accepted answer is kitsusaten, instead of the actual answer - kissaten.
Would appreciate if you could look into this.
Thanks again.

I fixed it for both courses. Keep in mind that I maintain romaji support for N5, but for N4+ (as well as most courses on Memrise) you will want to install an IME. If you are serious about studying Japanese, you should install one as early as you can. Here are some details:

How to Start Studying Japanese from JLPT Boot Camp
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Thank you. Really appreciate it. I’ve installed IME but haven’t figured out how to turn off predictive text for Japanese without turning it off for other languages. I feel that it does not aid my memorization if the spelling is completed by the computer.
Thank you again.

Oh wait. I think I might have figured out how to disable predictive text for one specific language only. Will try now and see if it works.

Hey, so I have a question about the „JLPT N5 Grammer" course. I’m a bit unsure about one vocab item in the な形容詞 part of the course which is にぎやかな町. I think it would rather be 賑やかな街 since にぎやか usually uses the kanji while in context with „busy" I guess 街 makes more sense than 町. But I might be mistaken. In any case I would like to see both variations as correct answers. Thanks. ・ω・

I added alternatives that should cover everything. The main reason why it is にぎやかな町 now is because of the kanji. In this course, I tried to use the simplest kanji. ‘賑’ is an N1 kanji and in practice, a lot of natives don’t actually use it. My proofreader doesn’t use it regularly and I haven’t seen it in regular use. 町 is an N4 kanji, where as 街 is an N3 kanji. The main difference between the two is that 町 used for more rural areas, where as 街 is used more for urban areas.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions, the alternatives should work now.

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Thanks for the info and the added alternatives! :slight_smile:

A few things:

  1. The Readings course says it teaches how the word is normally written in “common Japanese”. Yet 「うるさい」 — which the introduction specifically uses as an example of a word that is rarely written in kanji, and which you therefore wouldn’t be learning the kanji for in this course — is taught in kanji (「煩い」) instead of hiragana. (Similarly, 「コーヒー」 is taught in ateji (「珈琲」), while my understanding is that this is normally only used on shop signs and the like — though I could be wrong, plus one could consider that “common Japanese”, since someone visiting Japan would probably be reading shop signs pretty often.) There might be other cases — such as 「晩御飯」 (is 「ご」 usually written in kanji in this particular word?), 「其れでは」 (is 「それ」 usually written in kanji in this particular word?), 「如何して」 (is 「どう」 usually written in kanji in this particular word?), 「勿論」 (is this word usually written in kanji?), or 「出掛ける」 (is 「か」 usually written in kanji in this particular word?) — but I wouldn’t know.
  2. For the colours I’ve been learning so far, the course differentiates between the noun form (赤, 白, etc.) by using “(the color) [color]” as the definition, while saying only “[color]” for the adjective form (赤い, 白い, etc.). However, this seems not to have been done with the noun forms of “black” (黒) and “yellow” (黄色), which are simply defined as “black” and “yellow”, making them inconsistent with other colours, and forcing one to guess which word it wants. Edit: I noticed on the web version that there’s a tag telling you what part of speech it is. I’m not sure if this just doesn’t appear on mobile, or if I simply never noticed it. Well, either way, even if I can tell what it’s prompting me for, the inconsistency is going to bother me! XD
  3. In Level 46, the definition for 「晩御飯」 is giving as “evening meal (longer)”. What is “longer” supposed to signify? Edit: Apparently it’s to contrast with 「夕飯」, which is defined as “evening meal (shorter)”. But the latter doesn’t appear until 8 levels later, which leaves you scratching your head about the former until you get there. The wording also can make it sound like one word signifies a longer meal than the other, rather than simply meaning that one word is longer than the other.
  4. Level 48 is labelled “576-600”, but only contains 24 entries; level 54 is labelled “651 - 675”, but only contains 21 entries.

Thanks for this course, I really enjoy it. ^^

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Thanks for making this course! Just want to say どうして shouldn’t have kanji (如何して) - it’s so uncommon that Google IME doesn’t even give me that option unless I type いかがして. There are other words on the course like this too, but all the others so far are typable with the default IME config.

Hi, first I’d like to thank you for all your course you’ve created. Great Job! I was wondering if it was possible to differentiate some of the words like それ and その by adding an “pronoun” or “adjective” to the description. I usually have to guess which one its asking for. Thank for your time.

There’s already tags below the question to help differentiate. They’re small and easy to miss, but they’re there.

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Oh you’re right! Thank you for pointing it out! I was having trouble with those and colors. Thanks again!

For the sake of clarification, there’s a mistake with the kanji corresponding to おじいさん (grandfather) in the level 33 - Kanji for 376 - 400. A similar problem happens for the word おばあさん (grandmother) in the level 17 - Kanji for 376 - 400.

The kanji version for this word should be お祖父さん rather than お爺さん since the first one means “grandfather” whereas the latter means “male senior citizen”. The same for お祖母さん and お婆さん. References [here] (http://jisho.org/search/おじいさん) and here respectively.

@jlptbootcamp, I hope you can update them since I’ve been using your useful course to learn both the reading and the Kanji of the vocabulary items and I keep failing those words over and over again whenever they come up during the periodic reviewing sessions. Thank you very much!

@SavannahJ

  1. fixed うるさい, the ateji for コーヒー is on purpose. It is common enough on signs, bags of coffee, etc…
    As for 晩御飯 and the others like it. they have all been changed to 〜ごはん (e.g. 晩ごはん). This seems to be consistent to what Google and ALC seem to think are the most common spellings. The question words were changed as well. もちろん is usually not written in kanji, but 出掛ける seems to be the most common spelling of でかける. At least that is what ALC seems to think.

  2. The tags (technically called attributes) should show up in the mobile version. They show in the Android version of the app anyway. Are they not being displayed in the iOS version? I haven’t had time to dig out an iOS device and install the app. For consistency, I can delete the (the color), but they were originally there for the first few ones to call attention to the fact that there are two forms in the course.

  3. You made some good points. However, there aren’t a lot of other ways to note the difference. I mean we aren’t talking about a difference in registers here. Or at least my research hasn’t revealed any. We are talking about the actual length of the word being the only difference between them. Some people say 晩御飯, some people say 夕飯.

We could add alts to both words so that either is acceptable when prompted, but a lot of people like to be tested on two variations of a word separately.

As for signifying if it’s a longer or shorter meal, I would put that in front and not in parentheses if that is what I was trying to signify. It’s the best solution for right now. If you have a different idea that doesn’t involve giving the answer away, please let me know.

  1. I moved 渡すto fix the discrepancy and renamed the last level.

@jarmanso7
I changed the kanji for the regular course. Since it is not common Japanese it has been changed to just kana for the readings course.

I started a changelog:
http://jlptbootcamp.com/memrise-jlpt-n5-change-log/

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There are two terms for yellow: once on level 12/13 as 黄色 -> きいろ-> yellow and once on level 20/21 as 黄色い -> きいろい -> yellow. As far as I can tell, you have to guess which one it’s asking for when prompted “yellow”.

The way I distinguish between those two entries is to reference the ‘part of speech’ information, located underneath the prompt:

@TateLiang If you’re on pc, then look to the right of the comments and you’ll see reply arrow and circle. Click the circle and you can choose your notifications setting for this thread.

Also, another thing about the colors that might help you tell them apart, and probably also other stuff. i-adjectives always end in い. So if you ever see adj-i, then it’s きいろい, and adj-na will be きいろ, for example.

Hey :slight_smile:
thank you so much for putting all the effort in these courses! I have one myself for the vocabularies I learn in class and I know that it’s a hell lot of work to keep everything up to date :slight_smile:

I’m sorry if this question has already been answered, but just as a clarification:
Is the vocab course also in “normal” Japanese? (or do I learn kanji that I’ll never need to know?)

Have a wonderful day :slight_smile:

Hi there! Well most of the course’s kanji are commonly used. Though there are some really few exceptions. Like coffee 珈琲 (コーヒー), and beautiful 綺麗 (きれい) that I’ve almost never seen outside this course. However, if you pass a kanji that seems unnecessary, you could always use ‘ignore’.