Please post any feedback and suggestions about the official Memrise-created Russian courses here. Our Russian Language Specialist @pasha75 will then look into it.
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I hope the Russian language specialist does look at the course; just an example in Russian 1:novogo for new, but dictionaries say но́вый for “new”, which is pronounced novɨj, до свида́ния not до свидания
etc
Hi Hydroptere,
Thank you for your comment. You are right, ‘новый’ is a correct translation of the word ‘new’ in the Nominative case. However in Russian we have six different cases and decline words accordingly. Here the word is presented in the Genitive case, since it is the form used in the following phrase. Regarding ‘до свидания’: the little accent you can see in some dictionaries is there to indicate the word stress. In Russian there is no such thing as predictable stress, so some dictionaries put a little accent on top of the vowel under stress. It might sound like a tricky thing to grasp, that’s why all our official Memrise courses have audios that help you hear the word’s natural pronunciation and make your language learning experience enjoyable. Hope it helps 
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There is a frustrating translation issue with the “Getting Fed” unit in Russian 2. You are teaching three constructions for “I would like,” but only two of them should be translated this way: я бы хотел or мне хотелось бы. Принесите мне is literally “bring me.” It does not use a verb of wanting nor does it contain the subjunctive particle бы (which we translate as “would” and as such, “I would like some milk” for “Принесите мне молока” is incorrect and confusing, as it requires the user to memorize which construction each prompt prefers rather than learning how to correctly translate from English to Russian.
A similar issue is happening with “что вы хотите” and “вы бы хотели…” Only the latter should be translated “Would you like.” “Что вы хотите” is just “Do you want.” Only if бы is present should “would” appear in the English translation.
I also don’t really understand why this unit is dealing with the subjunctive and not teaching the far more straightforward and useful constructions like “я хочу” (I want) or “дайте мне” (give me - more common in my experience than принесите). The subjunctive is a fairly advanced grammatical concept.
Granted, the real issue here may simply be that I am an advanced user of the language just goofing around with the easy levels. None of this may bother the course’s intended audience. But in the interest of quality and not being confusing, I suggest taking a look at this.
A better word for “boyfriend; young man” would be парень.
It still does not accept меня for me. I reported it maybe a month ago.
It should accept all these 3 words separately. Only accept мной
For Russian 1, at first words are written in roman alphabet and then on the following lessons in Cyrillic alphabet. When reviewing the words I can’t know if it’s asking for Cyrillic or Roman, so if I write the word in Cyrillic and was expecting roman counts it as wrong and viceversa. Would it be possible to correct this, always asking for Cyrillic after learning the alphabet or admitting both ways?? Thank you
Hi lasquires6d, thank you for your valuable comment and suggestions. As you know, in our courses we focus on words and phrases commonly used in the language. Subjunctive constructions like ‘мне хотелось бы’ are important in these particular settings. We will, however, take another look at the level and make sure all the phrases are easy enough to learn. Thank you!
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lasquires6d, I think ‘молодой человек’ is more suitable here, as it can be used in a variety of social interactions. For example, it is acceptable to use ‘молодой человек’ as a form of address when you don’t know the person’s name - ‘молодой человек, Вы выходите на следующей остановке?’. On the contrary ‘парень’ would be considered too informal.
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Atikker, it should now accept меня, мне, мной separately. Please let me know if the problem persists.
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Iker_Gmez, the issue has been fixed. Thank you!
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Всё работает хорошо. Спасибо большое =)
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Atikker, ура! Обращайтесь, если возникнут проблемы. Приятного изучения!
Я не понимаю это. I guess it’s “if I have problems… i could always ask?” My Russian is still in child shoes.
Exactly!
Somewhere around Russian 6/7, there are two “crime scene - место преступления”. They look identical, but they are often presented together in multiple choice, and there is definitely a wrong one and a right one. If I just have to type it, it’s fine (I obviously type it the same way both times), but if I get a multiple choice on one of them, it’s a 50/50. I just had them both in the same review session, actually.
Also, you should probably generally check up on confusing things in your database. You know your system. People who do Russian 7 have probably done the other six as well and will continually review. So if you got secret as секрет somewhere, you should probably distinguish it somehow from the secret that is тайный. It also seems completely random when both impf. and pf. are accepted for verbs and when only one is. Random also seems to apply to short-form adjectives (sometimes they’re all right to use, even expected, sometimes not).
Wrong audio in Russian 1, Food. Egg яйцо. Male voice is ok.
Something like this from Russian 7 is also really annoying. At least there’s a slight difference, so I know that the Russian 7 ни ни goes with the comma-less English version (in spite of the comma in the Russian version). I don’t remember what level the other ни ни is from, but I certainly hope I won’t have to review it anytime soon.
The advanced nature of the grammar was really only my secondary concern. The primary issue is that the English translations do not match the Russian and that you are translating multiple Russian phrases with a single English phrase. This is confusing for the user, who simply has to guess which one you want (and to translate incorrectly in many cases). This is an issue throughout the courses, as you can see in the comments from other people.
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Are you happy? Lvl 1. Ты счастлива? should be correct as well. Please add an alternative answer or extra information Are you happy? (male).