I don’t know why you guys place so much emphasis on “hanyu pinyin”. When we were in school, we only leaned it like for 2 weeks. And the only time where it is useful, is for checking the dictionary. But these days, how many of us still use a dictionary? If we were to write anything in “pinyin”, that’s a zero.
Messed up audio in Mandarin Chinese 2, module 34.
Video clips are OK, the male voic is OK, but the female voice most often says something else (another phrase) than what is written - great fun in exercises, where you are supposed to replace what you hear by what it should be.
Additionally, there is a phrase (“I have to buy an umbrella” out of memory, not too sure) where the supposed corresponding pinyin starts with “ni”. I guess that fixing the English is the easiest.
I’ve completed the first couse, but cannot leave it completely, because of one item: I never know what I have to answer when prompted with “happy” kāixīn or gāoxìng (as both are present, the first at the beginning of the course, and the latter close to the end of)
the Mandarin 2: the natives pronuncing “can you speak English?/nǐ huì shuō yīngyǔ ma？” definitely do not pronounce in the way of the “teachers”; the boy is almost unintelligible, the lady (as well) does not say “shuo” (with “sh” like in shell), but… something else ; also, 2 in 3 natives do not pronounce the Beijing dialect “yìdiǎn’r”, but simply “yìdiǎn”
thanks
Hi,
Sorry if this is not the right place to post this.
These are really awesome courses, is there any plan to roll out Mandarin Chinese 4 to 7 soon?
Many Thanks!
Audio for both wǒ děi zǒu le and old for objects in Mandarin two are wrong
In Mandarin 2, 卖 actually plays audio (mai) after you’ve typed the answer (to buy)! I have no idea why only 卖 does this, but as it is technically possible, is there any chance this could get rolled out for more of the characters? @xia.fan
I don’t know how labour intensive this would be, but I personally believe it would be a big step up. Playing the audio at least goes some way towards making the connection between the characters and how to pronounce it in Chinese more immediate. Additionaly, I find the current character sessions to be almost eerily silent.
I also don’t think it would matter if the characters that don’t already have an audio file remains silent. That just means that it is currently not taught as a (standalone) word, and a mix of audio and silent would still be preferable to full on silence.
From my understanding, meet the natives is meant to be a listening exercise not a pronunciation guide, and yidian without 儿 is how it is normally pronounced in southern China. This sounds like a feature, not a bug, in terms of preparing us for understanding native speech.
1 Like
Hi,
Sorry for the inconvenience! I have deleted the wrong audios.
Thank you for your feedback. 
Xia
Hi,
Thank you very much for the feedback. The incorrect audios have now been deleted.
Xia
Hi,
Both ‘yìdiǎn’r’ and ‘yìdiǎn’ are correct. ‘yìdiǎn’r’ is merely a northern preference instead of a strict standard.
Thanks for your feedback.
I have realised the problem of the silent character levels. But right now we are unable to add audios for the characters without testing on them. As the main function of the character levels is to teach characters rather than to teach the pronunciation of them (in fact, some characters are merely radicals that even native Chinese wouldn’t know the pronunciation), the audio tests would be redundant and distracting. On the other hand, if the character in the character levels is also a lexical item that people will say in real life, this character will be introduced in other lexical levels with audio. For now, I have deleted the audio for 卖 in the character level (level 15), but it is introduced again as a lexical item in the lexical level (level 16) with audio.
Sorry for the inconvenience at the moment, and we are looking into this issue.
Thank you again.
Xia
Many thanks for taking the time to explain!
For the reason you state, I agree that audio for characters sorts under ‘nice to have’ rather than ‘need to have’. However, I don’t think he association between character and pronunciation is always as straightforward to make as with 卖 and mai, where character and the pronunciation are in levels that immediately follow each other (and are defined identically). When this is not the case, I believe it is an issue that pronunciation/pinyin and characters are only shown at the same time when a new word/character is first learnt or you make a mistake.
As an example, 取 (to take; to get) is introduced in Mandarin 1 - as a building block to 最 - but IIRC it is first used as a lexical item in Mandarin 2 (with the slightly more specialised meaning of to withdraw). Now I picked up on this connection because I had already learnt the pronunciation and (similar) meaning in the old Mandarin 2 course before learning the character in the new Mandarin 1 course, and got curious enough to google the character. I doubt I would have made the association had I just gone through the course as designed, as it would then have been a very long time between being told the pronunciation of 取 and seeing it used.
All of the above is basically just to say why I’m glad that you’re looking into the issue of how to improve teaching the characters. I hope I don’t sound like a broken record, I just really think it is the weakest part of an otherwise excellent course!
Yes, we are aware of the issue and we will do our best to offer a more consistent and efficient learning experience for the Chinese characters.
Many thanks for your support and patience.
Xia
I am not sure there: I have lately natives from South and North at the company, they told me that the pronunciation without “R” used to be the “correct” one as taught as school…
I came to report the same issue. It is still not fixed (at least on the Android app).
I have a serious request and I expect anyone can help me with this.
I can’t get the point of learning Chinese with pinyin here, and after that Memrise start teaching me characters, however I don’t know where and how to use it.
Only telling me
this character means “bed”, but you will not where to use it.
feels a little odd and, at some point, unsatisfying.
If anyone has some hope for me, I’ll appreciate it
(Nevermind the bad english, I’m a Spanish native and I did my best ahaha)
Thanks mmunity!
mandarin 2:
why wǒ xiǎngyào, but before only wǒxiǎng and wǒyào as right answers?
wǒ xiǎng and wǒ yào should be accepted as correct alternatives, please
Hi,
Due to a bug, we can’t automatically upload all the alternative pinyin. We are looking into this issue right now. For the time being, I’ll manually add the alternatives when they’re pointed out.
Thanks for your feedback!
Xia
I have found several specific problems with Mandarin Chinese 2. Many are typos. One of them is a structural problem with the app.
-
“Soy Sauce” is spelled “soy source”
-
The phrase “please give me a bottle of beer, thanks” has is spelled “plese…”
-
When you are prompted to fill in “Are you jealous,” there are to "ma?"s; one of them does not work despite both being correct
-
“I must buy an umbrella” will only be counted correct if entered “Nǐ dé mǎi yī bǎ yǔsǎn”; this is incorrect
-
“Please give me a cup of tea, thanks” will only be counted correct if an unnecessary word is added: “lai”; this is incorrect
-
In every instance in which a character has more than one meaning, inputs will only be accepted correct if entered in the order that the app has meanings listed; this is a structural problem and should be fixed
My wife is mainland chinese and seems to be taking issue with the lvl 1 Mandarin’s translation of: háo jiǔ bú jiàn.
She says it should be written as such: hǎo jiǔ bú jiàn.
The app dictates that the 2nd tone is to be used such as háo but she is adamant that it should be 3rd tone hǎo.
I noticed this inconsistency because one of the modules I had to type out the phrase hǎo jiǔ bú jiàn with the letters being provided for me, but the ǎ was not provided and every other variation was deemed incorrect and I had to skip it. Later on I noticed that the tone being assigned was 2, not the 3.