Thanks for reporting! Could you let me know the exact items or courses where you found this problem? The problem is that the Chinese characters in a phrase/sentence could be divided in many different ways, so there’re different ways to have spaces in a phrase/sentence.
2 Likes
It’s all over Mandarin 2.
Here are some examples.
Level 12:
gāo xìng
hěn gāoxìng hé nǐ jiànmiàn
Level 14:
qú kuǎn jī
nà gè yínháng yǒu qǔkuǎnjī ma？
Level 3:
yì diǎn’r
wǒ huì shuō yìdiǎn’r hànyǔ
géi wǒ yì diǎn’r níunǎi (level 14)
wǒ juédé zhègè bù hǎokàn (level 10)
zhè gè háizi shì shéi？(level 19)
zhè gè háizi shì tāde nǚer
wǒ yào zhè gè (level 8)
zhè gè hěn tián
level 5
wǒ de
wǒ de diànhuà hàomǎ shì …
zhè shì wǒde měiguó péngyǒu (level 19)
nà bú shì wǒde nǚer (19)
many other examples of this one.
level 8
ké yǐ
wǒmen kéyǐ zuò nà lǐ ma？
level 10
zěn me yàng
nǐ juédé zěnme yàng?
zěnme shuō (level 12)
level 10:
zhè me
wó yě zhème juédé
Also I don’t know if this is just on my setting, but it used to show chinese characters, now it doesn’t. This is important because a lot of times there are multiple correct options and the chinese characters are needed to choose the right one. For example. I get “How many” as a translate request, and when I type duōshǎo it’s marked wrong, because they want jǐgè. How am I supposed to know which one they want without context?
SImilarly, you get it marked wrong depending on whether or not you include gè in sentences like
zhè gè háizi shì tāde nǚer
zhè shì wǒde měiguó péngyǒu
Maybe it’s obvious to a native speaker that one sentence should have it and the other not, but it’s really not obvious to me. Please bring the chinese characters back. They help a lot in figuring out exactly what sentence you are going for.
I’ve got a comment regarding Mandarin Chinese 1.
Some expected answers have pinyin syllables connected like: “haochi”, while others want anwers with syllables separated like: “hao chi”. There is no rule or schema in this variants. Just in some answers it’s separated, in some it’s not.
Looks like course author randomly wrote some word separated and some connected. Please fix. This applies to those combinations: “hao chi”, “zou ba”,“nan chi”, “hao he” and probably few more.
This BUG makes repetitions very uncomfortable and makes me swear a lot…
Hi aaron_bader46,
Thank you for your detailed reply. There are various possibilities of pinyin spacing because Chinese doesn’t have spaces in phrases and sentences. But either answer should be accepted, and I already fixed all the problems that you reported. I also added “jǐgè” as an alternative for “how many”. And we are looking in to showing the characters at the test. Thank you again and please let me know should you have any other problems. 
1 Like
Both jǐgè and duōshǎo should be correct when the english clue is “how many” without any context. I don’t think you fixed it when it expects jǐgè but you type duōshǎo. Similarly the two meanings of “fat” should accept both féi and pàng, or at least add parenthesis to the English definition so that you can tell whether it’s talking about people or clothing (I’m guessing that’s the difference).
More inconsistencies in level 26 of Mandarin 2:
yú sǎn
yì bǎ yúsǎn
wó děi mǎi yì bǎ yú sǎn
xiǎo biàn
wǒ děi qù xiǎobiàn
Also, perhaps there is a language reason for these, but it’s very hard for a non-native speaker to distinguish between these meanings of “want”
nǐ xiǎng yào chènshān ma？
tā yào lánsè de kùzi
ní xiǎng mǎi shénme？
If there is a reason for the different meanings, then it’s fine. But if any of xiǎng yào, yào, or xiǎng make sense in those sentences, then all three should be acceptable. There are lots of other instances of xiǎng and yào being used somewhat interchangeably for the english “want.”
Another inconsistency that I immediately removed because it’s inconsistent in the same sentence:
wǒ bù xíguàn yòng kuàizi， wǒ xí guàn yòng dāo chā
I still think you’d be far better off to just ignore spaces altogether in the answers.
2 Likes
Thanks for fixing those really quickly!
Here’s the last set of inconsistencies I’ve found for Mandarin 2. These are inconsistencies across words not the same word spelled differently, so they’re a little less problematic, but still difficult to remember.
Level 27:
All the animals are spelled without a space, except for cow which is nǎi níu and rat which is láo shǔ with spaces.
Similarly, all the adjectives are given as one word: zhōngchéngde, cōngmíngde, etc. except for yóng gǎn de.
This last bit highlights another consistency problem where the suffix de is sometimes attached to the word, and sometimes not. For example, in the two words above it’s attached, but for all the colors it is not. Here’s an example of an unattached one from level 24:
zhè shuāng huīsè de shǒutào shì wǒ zuì xǐhuān de
I might recommend removing the “de” suffix from the adjectives and leaving it unattached when in sentences to be consistent. So zhōngchéng instead of zhōngchéngde, and when in a sentence, zhōngchéng de. This would also help for sentences in which the word does not need the “de” suffix, which you have an example of in level 27: xiàng gǒu yíyàng zhōngchéng
So to summarize, I think the following should be the answers and spacing:
loyal: zhōngchéng
brave: yónggǎn
clever: cōngmíng
stupid: shǎ
tall: gāo
free: zìyóu
quiet: ānjìng
cute: kěài
The high tone is always written as a bar over the letter, except for one instance in level 23 where a tilde is used:
duōme …… ya (correct)
duõme kěxī ya (incorrect)
duõme piàoliàng ya (incorrect)
I’m not sure the tildes are appearing properly on the forums, but they are certainly there on the quizzes.
wǒ men sān gè rén (level 6) still has a space in wǒmen which is inconsistent with I think every other instance. Also wǒ mén chī táng shàngyǐn (level 8)
Level 14: all the stores are written in one word except for yào diàn which is two
Finally, the last inconsistency is with the tone used for the falling-rising (or third) tone. Sometimes it is written as a falling rising tone when it precedes another falling-rising tone, and sometimes it’s written as a rising tone. I think it should always be pronounced as a rising tone. Luckily, you don’t have to actually type the tones to get the answer correct, but it still nags me.
Thank you so much for your report!
I’ve fixed all the pinyin inconsistencies that you pointed out. I agree that the spaces should be ignored altogether and our tech team is looking into it.
“xiǎng yào” and “yào” are interchangeable and they both mean “want”, but the former is more polite; “xiǎng” is different, which means “to think” or “missing (something/someone)”. “xiǎng+verb” means “thinking of doing something” or “want”. eg. “xiǎng chī”-want to eat; “xiǎng shuì”- want to sleep etc.
For the “de” suffix issue: “zhōngchéng” and “zhōngchéngde” could equally mean “loyal” but I get your point. However, I’m afraid I can’t change all the adj right now. If I did so, all the audios would need to be re-recorded as well.
The tilde hight tone problem has been fixed too
Could you let me know the exact items that have third tone inconsistency? The third tone would change to a rising tone when it precedes another third tone, because it is the natural change when one pronounces two third tones. Sometimes it doesn’t change in sentences when the two third tones are not to be pronounced together. eg. wó xiǎng mǎi yīxiē yīfu or wó děi mǎi yìbǎ yúsǎn. Here “xiǎng mǎi” are “děi mǎi” are not necessarily pronounced together in the sentence and there could be small pauses in between. Does it make sense? Another example: nǐ de nán péng yǒu yǒu gōngzùo ma? there should be pause between the two “yǒu”.
Thank you again:slight_smile:
1 Like
I really love the Chinese course so far! Only question I have is if there is any plans for a Traditional Mandarin Chinese variant (Much like how Spanish has (Spain) and (Mexico))
1 Like
Ok, that makes sense. I forgot that re-recording stuff would be a gigantic pain. I’ll keep an eye out for places where the written tone doesn’t appear to match the audio.
I did find another spacing inconsistency in mandarin 2 while reviewing. It’s in level 7:
zhè lǐ
nà lǐ
qǐng zuò zhè lǐ
wǒmen kéyǐ zuò nàlǐ ma?
I have fixed it thank you very much!
1 Like
Started Mandarin 3, came across some inconsistencies.
level 2:
wǒ de māo hén lǎo (usually wǒde is spelled as one word)
wǒ èrshí suì le (in mandarin 2, èrshí was two words. One should be changed to match the other, since in level 5 all the numbers are one word, I recommend changing Mandarin 2)
level 4:
tā yóudiǎn shāngxīn， yīnwèi tā méi yǒu nǚ péngyǒu (In Mandarin 2, level 6 méiyǒu is one word)
level 9:
wǒ bù míngbái nǐde yìsī. There’s a lot of inconsistencies with the spelling of nǐde. Personally, I think one word should be ok, because it then matches wǒde.
Then, probably all the possessives should have “de” attached. Such as 3 level 7:
nǐmen de yuēhuì shì shénme shíhòu？
Regardless, this spelling of nǐde as one word is inconsistent with Mandarin 2. For example, in Mandarin 2, level 8:
nǐ de diànhuà hàomǎ shì duōshǎo？
nǐ de shǒujī hàomǎ shì duōshǎo？
zhègè háizi shì tāde nǚer (2, level 19: here the third person possesesive is one word)
Then of course, there is the issue with “de” being connected with adjective words. But I’ll see if this becomes a big problem in Mandarin 3.
hello! we don’t have the item “垂” in the Madarin official courses, where do you spot this typo? Thanks!
Thank you very much! I’ve fixed all the above mentioned problems
Hi all,
First of all, thanks for updating the course. The inconsistent spacing does indeed make the repetition very frustrating, and it is good to see these effforts at making it more consistent. For users like me, however, that have learned the vocabulary in Mandarin 1-3 in its original spacing, it was a bit curious to have half of my answers rejected today because of these changes. So I think it would be best if both (or all) different spacings would be accepted, i.e., “nimende”, “nimen de” and “ni men de”. Thanks!
2 Likes
Just a follow up thought to this, instead of manually changing answers or adding multiple answers, maybe you can simply compare the strings without spaces, similarly as punctuation seems to be ignored?
Benjamin, I think we all agree that comparing without spacing is the better solution. I think that’s something that memrise currently doesn’t support. It is weird to get questions wrong on review that have changed, but overall it’s probably better to fix them than leave the inconsistencies. In the past I had to ignore a lot of the weirdly spaced ones.
Continuing on the inconsistency note. In the past I’ve commented on inconsistent marking of the third tone when it precedes another third tone. Usually in pronunciation this is said as a second tone. Sometimes it’s marked as a second tone and sometimes as a third tone. Here’s an inconsistency of that form in Mandarin 3 level 2:
nǐ hěn niánqīng
Here nǐ is clearly pronounced as a second (rising) tone in the female vocals. The male is actually too fast for me to tell. It is marked as a third (falling-rising) tone in the pinyin.
Compare that to previous sentence:
wǒde māo hén lǎo
Here hén is marked as a second tone in the pinyin and indeed is (and should be?) pronounced as such. The problem of course is that the standalone character is hěn, a third tone character. The difficulty of course is that whether you pronounce a third tone as a third tone or a second tone depends on the sentence itself (and possibly dialect?). I’m not sure a good solution. I think perhaps the best is to always mark third tone characters as third tone. But I understand that this may be very confusing for people who don’t know the third tone before another third tone rule…
Also: tài duõ has a tilde instead of a bar for the high tone.
You didn’t seem to get a reply about the difference between xiang and yao, so here goes:
Xiang means “want” in a polite way, similar to the English I would like. Yao means “want” ruder or childish way.
A simple bracket [e.g. (polite)] to signify xiang would probably clear out any ambiguity and increase the learning at the same time.
1 Like
Regarding inconsistent spelling, Mandarin 1 has the following splits:
- buhao
- bu haochi
- henhao
- henhao chi
- henhaochi
If this is following any rules, I certainly don’t see what those rules are. The last one I have only seen in this sentence: xiangjiao he chengzi henhaochi
Instinctively I’d say that if the pinyin is to be split up, it should be split up so that only characters forming words that you’d find in a dictionary are together. I presume that means that common modifiers/grammatical words (bu, hen, mei, de) would not normally be attached to words that have stand-alone meanings. The exception to this is probably men (们）- I find it a lot easier to think of women as we/us rather than I/me+plural.
Same issue with haohe/hao he.
Delicious (drink) only accepts hen hao he, but coffee is delicious only accepts kafei hen haohe.