– UPDATE (2022): Because of recent updates to Memrise (invasive and annoying ads in the app and making community courses un-searchable unless you know they’re there) I will not be supporting my courses or adding anything new to Memrise. I hope to eventually move everything over to Anki. —
If you find a mistake on any of the JTalkOnline or Niffer courses please let me know:
Good afternoon,
At first, I would like to thank you for all the interesting lessons.
In the “learn katakana using vocabulary” course, in “level 3”, when we are tested on this “ka-bam!, something strong hitting something sound”, if we write answer in kana characters, is is considered wrong.
Thank you for the nice comment and letting me know about this issue!
Sorry for the late reply, my laptop died and it’s been hard to get a replacement and get back online.
That’s really strange. Is it only happening with that one word? There doesn’t seem to be an issue in the database, it may be an error on Memrise’s end. I had added the word as an alternative answer to itself. Please let me know if it works now or not. If not I’ll message Memrise and see if it’s a bug.
In “* Learn Katakana using Vocabulary”, level 5, I noticed that the English definitions of the extended katakana (ティ, ディ, トゥ, ドゥ) are nonstandard and inconsistent with normal romanization (“tee”, “dee”, “too”, “doo”). On examination, it’s clear that “tee” and “dee” are meant to be read like “see”; and “too” and “doo” are meant to be read like “zoo”. But anyone learning kana is going to initially read “dee” as if it were デー, not ディ, and “doo” as if it were ドー, not ドゥ. These definitions are inconsistent with the rest (and therefore counterintuitive), and do not reflect general romanization standards. The common, intuitive, consistent, and generally accepted romanizations of these are “ti”, “di”, “tu”, and “du”, respectively.
In “* JLPT N4 Vocabulary”, level 7, the definition of すると is given as “then”. More accurately, and to prevent ambiguity, it should probably be given as “thereupon”, “hereupon”, or something similar. The other words in that level might benefit from being redefined as well. In level 3, the adjectives いたい and いそがしい are defined with “to be [adjective]” instead of simply “[adjective]”, which is inconsistent with the other definitions, and during later review gives the misleading impression that one is being prompted for a verb.
Thanks for those! I see what you mean and I’ve changed the katakana to fit with those. I also realized I hadn’t uploaded sound files for those so I’ve added those too… actually for some reason a lot of the sound files are missing on this course so I’ve added those too.
That is a good point about the adjectives and I’ve changed them to be just adjectives.
I’ve noticed a few other things in JLPT N5 Vocabulary and Kanji:
I’m not sure if it’s just the case of the audio file being for the wrong word or the person speaking just pronouncing it a bit funny, but the audio for ｢おきる｣ sounds like “ohiru”, and the audio for ｢みぎ｣ sounds like “miki”. I think there are other examples I noticed where the audio was either cut off or mismatched, but I can’t recall them offhand; if I find them again I’ll mention them.
One of the ｢それ｣ (Level 34) audio prompts is an entire sentence that sounds like it came from iKnow!; sounds like ｢それはとってもいいはなしだ。｣.
More of a suggestion than anything else: In level 34, the words ｢こちら｣, ｢そちら｣,
｢あちら｣ don’t include “this way”/“that way”/“that way over there” in the definition (though interestingly, ｢どちら｣ does include it).
I’m not sure how to explain this one… In Level 34, while being prompted for another word in a tapping test, one of the options was for ｢した｣, except that “underneath” was spelled “underneith”. I’m not sure how this happened, because in the level itself, the definition is spelled correctly.
Level 64 contains a duplicate entry from Level 29 (いれる: 入れる), while Level 63 contains a duplicate entry from Level 16 (いれる: “to put in (to something)”). I discovered this because I noticed that I already had progress in Levels 63 and 64 despite not being anywhere near that point yet; thinking I’d done this by accident, I wiped the learning history for them, only to suddenly notice that the two earlier levels were no longer full. XD
I think it’s also worth noting that Level 64 only contains two entries; since one of them is a duplicate from a previous level, I wonder if the other entry couldn’t be absorbed into a different level.
Edit: Level 38 has ｢おとこ｣ twice.
In Level 38, for ｢いっしょ（に）｣, even though the ｢に｣ is in brackets implying it’s optional in the response, it only counts it as correct if you include it. It looks like the brackets used were IME ones instead of regular ones, which might be why it isn’t working normally.
JLPT N4 Vocabulary:
In many cases where there are multiple definitions separated by a comma, there is no space after the comma, which prevents correct line breaks in tap tests. Examples: しあい: “match,game”, ちゅうがっこう: “junior high school,middle school”, はやし: “woods,forester” (Level 12), だいじ: “important,valuable, serious matter (not たいせつ)”, わけ: “meaning,reason” (Level 13).
Edit: I just discovered that this course has duplicate entries, too. Level 25 has a duplicate from Level 11 (われる: “to break (intransitive) (not こわす)”); Level 29 has a duplicate from Level 8 (ガス: “gas”).
Edit: It would be helpful if the definition for “to die” specified that it was not asking for しぬ. I’ve messed that up so many times because I either forgot that “This course doesn’t want しぬ”, or because I was reviewing multiple courses at once and didn’t know which course was asking.
I don’t know if it’s you or me or Memrise, but something’s up with level 21. All of the items have been planted, and they all display as such; yet this level won’t display as being completed. The green bar is just a sliver away from being full, and the level shows the “Continue learning” button (which of course doesn’t work since there’s nothing left to learn in it).
じょせい is defined as “woman”, while the corresponding だんせい is defined as “male”, which is inconsistent. Moreover, おんな in N5 is also defined as “woman”, which can cause confusion if one is reviewing multiple courses at once. Since おとこ in N5 is defined as “man, male person”, I think it would make sense for おんな to be defined as “woman, female person”, じょせい to be defined as simply “woman”, and だんせい to be defined as simply “man”.
I’ve run into more adjectives which are defined as “to be [adjective]” instead of “[adjective]”: きらい (level 15), ねむい (level 22), and はずかしい (level 22).
Edit: In Level 74, 「〜ど」is defined as “~oC”. This should be “~°C”.
Both:
N4 and N5 have a lot of the same items, such as: blue, red, light, dark, hot, thick, thin, dangerous, cold, airport, etc. I’m sure there are at least a handful of others that I missed.
To prevent confusion (and be more accurate/specific), perhaps ねる in N5 should be defined as “to sleep (lying down); to lie down”, and ねむる in N4 should be defined as “to sleep (not necessarily lying down)”.
If I think of (or find) anything else, I’ll let you know!
I was wondering if you could help me with the JLPT N4 Kanji course. On level 15 there is the kanji 方 (ほう). I keep having the problem that I can’t see any difference between this and the kanji for 方 (かた), so I keep guessing wrong. Is there any chance of adding かた as an alternate? Thanks so much!
Hi, another small request for the JLPT N4 vocab course.
なくなる is in there for “to die”, but I don’t know the difference between that and しぬ and I keep guessing the wrong one. Could you either add an alternate or make the prompt more distinctive?
I’ve changed a lot of things you suggested. Wow N4 vocabulary’s a mess. Sorry about that!
When I made they were made using someone else’s vocabulary list which I re-organized into categories to make them easier to learn (as opposed to alphabetical order).
I completely missed the mess with the commas. Hopefully they should all be fixed now!
Hello, I have a question about the JLPT N1 grammar list. I tried using it last night, as I’m currently working though the same textbook. However, as the typing tests are not disabled, it’s promoting me to spell out the English translations of each grammar point.
I’m not sure if this is intentional or not, but I find it makes it quite difficult to get through the course. Would it be possible to have a no typing version? And thank you for putting the list together!
Is that the one using grammar from Try! 日本語能力試験N1 文法から伸ばす日本語?
That’s strange, I have typing tests disabled in the database so they should be tapping only.
When I use it on the computer it seems to work. Are you using the app or computer?
Thanks for the quick response!
