@NaYoungOh Can you help?
Hi John,
I followed the rules of transcription of The National Institute of the Korean Language.
They indicate “g, k for ㄱ” and “k for ㅋ”, but I chose to use only “g for ㄱ” as I want to highlight that there is indeed a difference in pronunciation between “ㄱ and ㅋ”.
Also, every consonant has its own name.
For example, ㄱ (기억), ㄴ (니은), ㄷ (디귿)……
However, it is pretty difficult to teach foreign learners through the app for now, and so I decided to teach every consonant using the vowel " ㅡ" instead of with its original name in an attempt to avoid confusion, and so that the consonant can be heard along with a vowel sound in the audio.
It’s great to know you are studying Korean and if you have any question about our Korean course, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
더워지는 날씨에 건강 유의하시고 항상 행복하세요!
한국어 공부 화이팅 
Best,
NA Young Oh
2 Likes
Course 1, 당신 is very danger word. It’s specific and usually using e.g. by marrieds.
1
당신의 이름은 뭐예요?
It’s very impolite to talk that way with strangers.
2
당신은 정말 천재예요!
당신은 아파요
당신이 맞아요
당신을 위한 것
Only marrieds.
3
당신은 어느 나라 사람이에요?
당신은 영국 사람이에요?
당신은 한국 사람이에요?
It’s very impolite to talk that way with strangers.
And what … why we must learn it?
Hi,
In Korea, the appellation is pretty important and complicated. Koreans usually use name+job title or proper appellation directly instead of using personal pronoun like you, she, he, etc.
We have 2 type of “you” in Korean. It is 너 and 당신.
The definition of “너” is the second person pronoun and it is used generally only if the listener is younger than you or same age with you.
The definition of “당신”
- Indicating listener as the second person pronoun.
- Formal expression to indicate husband and wife.
- Formal expression to indicate the second person pronoun in literary Korean.
- Informal expression to indicate the second person pronoun in fighting or arguing situation
- Very formal expression to indicate “myself”
I have copied in the above “너” and “당신” definition from Naver Korean Dictionary.
“너” is the more informal word so in my view it is better to go with 당신 for the intended learning purposes in this Korean language course. Of course 당신 is not perfect and has some drawbacks but we have pointed these out and given the intention of this course it is the best available option.
I hope my answer is useful for you. If you have any other question about our Korean course, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
한국어의 신이 되는 그날까지… 화이팅
Best,
Na Young
Korean 1’s alphabet learning is basically pointless because of the options it gives you. Memrise frequently has enough problems with process of elimination.
Like, e.g. I’ve finished Russian 1-7, and there often you get a question where you know the word is long, and it gives you a multiple choice, so you just pick the long word and get the right answer without actually learning anything. And it’s impossible to detach your brain and just pretend you’re too dumb to do basic spatial recognition, so your brain ends up solving the problems by patterns and nonverbal reasoning instead of by learning the language.
Likewise, this korean course is absolutely abysmal for this. You introduce a letter which is 1 or 2 lines, and then give me 8 options, 7 of which are multi phoneme characters that are much more complex, and 1 of which is simple.
Obviously I’m always going to choose the simple character, and then I never learn anything.
e.g. when you are testing me on ㅓ, the multiple choice options should be like:
ㅏㅓㅣㅗㅓㅜㅐㅔ
That way I actually have to know which character I am picking. otherwise I am very clearly just going to pick the character of lowest complexity. Right now it’s more like, “hey pick ㅓout of these characters”;
바 차 나 ㅓ ㅎ 아 츠 푸
like, there is absolutely no chance I wouldn’t spot it immediately here because it is by far the least complex character, so I end up not learning anything.
And it’s the same with typing, because korean IME keyboards aren’t phonetic. So the fact is, I am going to have to learn to type korean by absolute trial and error. Well memrise instantly accepts the answer if I find it, so if I accidentally bash the right letter, it’s going to accept it as the correct answer. And it takes me the full 30 seconds to guess which one it might be because I don’t know the layout yet.
Otherwise I can choose from the character list below, which has the exact same problems as above.
I’m literally just going to go off and do the rosetta stone course to learn the letters and then come back later once I know them because the way this course is set up for that is useless, there’s no way I can just deprogram my brain to not pick the one that’s very obviously spatially the correct result, that I can even tell when I’m squinting and without knowing any of the letters.
tl;dr In the multiple choice options for letters the multiple choice options should all be characters of the same order of complexity.
2 Likes
This is so true. I also wish you can message those that follow you or people learning the same language in order to study together.
Hi Alexroseajr,
Thank you for pointing this out.
Yes, you make a valid and we have actually been in the process of fixing this already (for now it will be limited to the alphabet section). It may, however, take a while for the changes to come online so I apologise for any inconvenience in the meantime.
I hope you will have a great time learning Korean.
Best,
Na Young
Hello. In my Memrise app for the Android, Korean Level 6 doesn’t work. It says that there was an error loading the session. I can access it only through the desktop, what sometimes can not be so easy. Are there any ways to make it work? Thank you.
Hi,
I’m sorry for this inconvenience.
My colleague @alessio will look through it for you
Thank you for pointing this out
Have a nice day
Best,
Na Young
The audio for the Korean words for 70 and 80 is the same.
@NaYoungOh. Just moved this post into the Official topic. Would you mind looking at it? (It’s the post above)
Speak Soon, ML
Hi,
I’m not sure your point of the issues, can you please explain more clearly?
Just in case, I’ve checked the number item 70 and 80 but they are all good.
Best,
Na Young
Yes I was going through the course when I noticed the audio is the same for both words. I will screenshot it so you can see the two words. It sounds as if both 70 and 80 have the 70 audio.
Hi @DavidManvell @MarshallLanguages,
The course is not an official course so I can not handle it unfortunately.
You should contact with the creator for the changes.
Sorry for this inconvenience.
Best,
Na Young
What? I thought I was talking to the memrise people! I certainly do not have the ability to fix HTML issues with their website. If you’re not able to help me who can?
Can you please double check your audio files?
I don’t think it is HTML issues, it looks like you uploaded the same file for both items 70 and 80
Can you delete the incorrect file and re-upload it?
Course creation FAQs here: https://memrise.helpshift.com/a/memrise-learn-a-new-language/?l=en&s=course-creation
If you have further questions, please contact here : https://memrise.helpshift.com/a/memrise-learn-a-new-language/?contact=1
Thanks!
Thank you for telling me what I’ve already stated. Yes the audio files are the same. That’s why I have posted this. Can you please correct it???
[Korean Course 3, German version, Level 14 “Measuring things”(?)]
[Koreanisch Kurs 3, Level 14 “Dinge bemessen”]
(The German words are similar to English, so I´ll post it here!)
킬로미터 does mean Kilometer, however, 킬로 does not. 
킬로 should mean “Kilo” (like in English). 
It’s hard to study those words like that since one has a wrong meaning! :
And due to the two German words being the same, it gets really confusing. 
I hope you’ll fix this soon! Just change the meaning of 킬로 to “Kilo” 
Hi,
I’m sorry for this inconvenience.
My colleague @linh.vu will look through it for you.
Thank you for pointing this out.
Have a nice day!
Best,
Na Young
Hi @ShinHyeonMin,
thanks for pointing that out! I’ve made changes to the item and it says “Kilo” now. You should be able to see the changes once you’ve logged out and in again.
Happy learning!
Linh