Hello Memrise team,
I’d like to ask why courses are duplicated now?
For example, Spanish (Mexico) 6:
They are a little bit different. Probably the new one is an updated version. If so, why not to tune existing ones to avoid confusion and to avoid leaving people who already completed coursed behind?
Hello @Linguiniii,
Thanks for the question! The courses are not duplicated, but the first one is for US English speakers, whereas the second one is for UK English speakers, but the content is practically the same, so you can choose the one that fits your source language.
Best regards,
Ángela
Thank you @angileptol,
I would never guess! And wouldn’t bother now.
Just maybe it’s worth to identify it in the description somehow to avoid confusion.
@angileptol ,
My fiance has been wanting to learn Spanish and since I can’t always sit down with him and help him one on one, I suggested he try out Memrise’s Mexican Spanish course. He pointed out a phrase to me in Mexican Spanish 3 and asked me to explain it, after I noticed a mistake I figured I would reach out on here to see if it could be corrected. In Mexican Spanish 3 level 2 the word “confuso” is used for confused, and then again in level 3 it says “Estoy un poco confuso”. That’s grammatically incorrect. In Spanish for a person that is confused you say “confundido/confundida”, the word “confuso” it used for something that is confusing. Like “Es un proceso muy confuso”. By saying “estoy un poco confuso” you’re having the person say that they are confusing and not confused. So if you want to keep using the word confuso in level 2, you should translate it correctly as confusing, or if it is meant to say confused it should be changed to “confundido/confundida”. As for the phrase I’m a little confused, it should be changed to “estoy un poco confundido” if it’s a man speaking and “estoy un poco confundida” if it’s a woman speaking. Thanks for looking into this, I really appreciate it! 
I disagree. “Confuso” can be translated as “confusing” when referring to things, but also as “confused” when referring to people.
I do not know if in Mexico the second sense is rare or not, but after a quick search I found a text from a Mexican writer where he uses “confuso” meaning “confused”:
“Arnaldo Orfila me urgía a entregarle el libro. Yo estaba confuso e indeciso.” (Juan Rulfo)
@dadatic, grammatically both terms can be used, to denote confusion. However, in Mexico in every day speech “confundido” is used when a person is confused and “confuso” is used to refer to situations or other things. Also, I respect you finding an example of a Mexican writer, but the prose found in Mexican Literature doesn’t necessarily represent how every day people speak. Just like I wouldn’t quote John Steinbeck to argue what I thought the most common term for something in present day American English might be, using Juan Rulfo (who died over 30 years ago) isn’t necessarily the best defense on what is the most common phrase used in Mexico today. Also, just to clarify a bit, the reason my fiance asked me about this phrase in particular is because his Spanish Teacher (who is from Spain) at school heard him say “Estoy confuso” and corrected him saying he should use “estoy confundido” when talking about himself. Then when he brought it up to me, I agreed having only ever used and heard “estoy confundido” in Mexico. Upon reading your opinion I looked up some other language forums and it seems that in some countries “estoy confuso” and “estoy confundido” are used by people when confused, but in other countries the term “estoy confuso” is not commonly used and sounds strange as “confuso” is more commonly used with situations and other things and not people. As a final test I texted a bunch of my friends who currently live in Mexico and asked them if they use the phrase “estoy confuso” or “estoy confundido” more. Every one of them responded with “estoy confundido” and said they had never used the phrase “estoy confuso” before. One of my friends even said "Estoy confuso se escucharía cavernícola 
" So although a Mexican author may have used “estar confuso” in a novel, in modern-day Mexico it is not used and sounds strange to native speakers. This has been an interesting topic and I have enjoyed doing a bit of research after reading your response. I also apologize for earlier stating that “estoy confuso” is incorrect, as you and the other forums I read through have pointed out that grammatically it is not. That being said, localization is very important as this is a Mexican Spanish course and not a general Spanish course. Because of that, I think it’s important to choose the phrases and words for this course that are most used in Mexico, which in this case is “estoy confundido/ estoy confundida”.
I was just disagreeing about being grammatically incorrect to translate “I am confused” as “estoy confuso”. I never tried to imply that using “confuso” as “confused” is very common in Mexico. I was using Juan Rulfo’s text only to show that the discussed usage of “confuso” is not totally strange to Mexican speakers.
The example is not a novel, but an autobiographical sketch written in 1985 in a style that might not be as informal as spoken language, but is quite plain and easy to understand. Is 1985 really like the Stone Age? I think that in terms of language evolution that’s nothing. There are a lot of people still alive who were readers at the time.
That said, I agree that Memrise seems to have the goal of teaching colloquial everyday language, so they should probably choose for this course whatever expression is most common in Mexico.
Hi i am early in the lessons and it sounds like the recordings for ‘que’ and ‘qué’ are swapped. Pronunciation of Qué bc of the accent, should end on a high- like a question. But that one sounds flat, while ‘que’ with no accent sounds like a question in the lesson. Does anyone else hear the same thing?
In Spanish (Mexico) 5 for US English, it would make more sense for “el secretario de Estado” to be translated as “the Secretary of State” than “the minister”.
In Spanish (Mexico) 7 for US English, “la llanta” should be translated as “the tire”. We don’t have tyres in the USA, we have tires.
In the Spanish (Mexico) 1 Launchpad lesson you have only one possible answer for the “goodbye” - adios. That is not correct. You should permit the word “chao” as a correct answer, as well. Here in Colombia it is common to use “chao” for normal, every day “goodbye” and here we use “adios” as a passing greeting, similar to “howdy” or “hey” in the US. When passing someone while walking along the sidwalk, you see someone sitting on their patio (or somewhere alongside the road) and we say “adios” while passing by. It’s used the same as in the States when we would say “howdy” or “hey” in the same context.
In Spanish 3, level 21, the “¡qué bárbaro!” translation should be updated from “Sick!” to something more accurate. “Sick!”, by itself and without any other context, makes more sense to translate to “enfermo; enferma”.
I suggest for the “¡qué bárbaro!” translation to be updated to something more along the lines of “Sick! (Awesome! Cool!)” instead.
Hope this makes sense. Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks,
Kyle
Spanish (Mexico) 1 – Not really an error, but a question type that shouldn’t be asked: “qué” and “que”, of course, have different meanings, but cannot be distinguished during a listening (audio) skill question. You’ll hear either word and are asked to choose which meaning or sometimes which word spelling. There’s no way to tell by audio alone!
Hi,
Thanks for reporting that problem, we will investigate to see if we can solve it. I’ll update you soon.
Thanks for your patience and happy learning!
Ángela
Hi @bredders41,
We have removed “qué” and “que” as distractors of each other, so you shouldn’t have problems with those items in listening skills anymore. Thanks again for reporting that problem and happy learning!
Ángela
Not sure if this has been reported before, but in level 2 I don’t think the translation for “ningún” (any) is correct.
I’ve noticed a few oddities in the Spanish (Mexico) 1 course
¿qué hay de nuevo? = “what’s up?” - it really should be “What’s new?”
correcto = right (correct) - why not simply “correct”?
genial = awesome - why not simply “genial”? Sure, it’s not in common usage in English, but it does have a similar meaning, although the English word’s meaning is more restrained.
maravilloso = wonderful; marvellous - okay, but why not simply “marvellous”?
es maravillosa = she’s wonderful - again, why not simply “she’s marvellous”?
¡qué maravilla! = how wonderful! - again, why not simply “what a marvel”? It’s much closer in meaning.
súper = cool - why not simply “super”?
estupendo = great - why not “stupendous”
¡es grandioso! = that’s great! - why not “it’s grandiose”? Also, why have one English word (great) translated as two different Spanish words (grandioso and estupendo)? It just causes confusion for no reason.
Surely these things need to be changed so that they help us to learn, rather than getting in the way. There’s no reason why a Spanish word shouldn’t be translated to its closest English equivalent, unless the word’s meaning is completely different, and in all these cases (with the possible exception of “genial”, it’s not.
The courses are not duplicated, but the first one is for US English speakers, whereas the second one is for UK English speakers…
How do we know which is which?
Oh, I think I figured it out. What we see depends on which language we choose as our native language. Unfortunately for me, I’m from the UK and living in the US, so although I’m British I’m now more used to US spelling. When I started with Memrise I chose “UK English”. Does that mean it’s going to punish me if I use US spelling? I’m already through Spanish 1 (so far without problems), but it will be kind of annoying if that’s the case.
