I’m running into a couple of problems here with HSK 4 (red) level 5. When it’s an audio prompt asking to type the Chinese character, it is often frustrating that it doesn’t allow different possible answers. For example, when it prompts with bi3, it could be 笔 or 匕 or 比. On two occasions, I typed the second and it marked it wrong because it was looking for the first.
Additionally, I understand 笔 to mean pen more than it means brush, so it is confusing when it’s asking for “brush*” expecting 笔.
I imagine you are not using the desktop and that you have audio tests active. May I suggest that you disable audio tests for Chinese courses as they contain far too many homonyms and homophones. Audio tests do not work well with ‘tonal’ languages, at least not in the way memrise has implemented them. As for ‘笔’, ‘brush’ has been the main definition since as long as I can remember. Changing this would undoubtedly hurt other users. Also, note that the Chinese used caligraphy brushes to write with until modern times so they don’t make the same distinction between pen and brush like we do in the west.
SoL
I was actually using desktop, but I will take your suggestion of disabling audio tests.
I am a heritage learner, i.e. although I was born and raised in the US, I grew up speaking the language with family and some friends and am currently using these courses to improve my reading. My entire life, I’ve used 笔 to mean pen and not brush, and I’ve literally never heard anyone use it to mean brush unless they qualified it with 毛笔. For example, “用一支笔” means, to me, “use a pen.” I guess it’s interesting that we’ve had very different ideas of what the main definition is for as long as we can remember lol. I also would disagree that they don’t make the distinction as in the West, but maybe my experience is limited.
I agree the ’毛笔‘ was what I had in mind when I replied. The main definition of '笔‘, (in case I wasn’t clear), does not come from me but memrise and has been ‘brush’ for as long as I can remember. However, feel free to answer with ‘pen’ as that is also accepted as a correct answer.
SoL
Hi, I just finished the Red HSK Level 1 couse that was created by BenWhately, and I was confused to start next. I tried the obvious choice of HSK Level 2, but it seems like many of the words were in HSK Level 1, which I intend to keep reviewing. I don’t want to just start all over again, and I don’t want to go through and ignore what I already know if I’ll have to do it again for Level 3. Am I missing something?
You are not missing anything; it is a pain. The auto-ignore feature was removed because it performed poorly. Currently, I just learn levels in HSK 5 and press the ‘I’ key when I encounter a duplicate word. This way is much less work than checking the ignore boxes on the level screen.
SoL
Just to add on to stuentoflife’s response, you can also go into the specific lesson’s list of words, and manually ignore anything you know. Looking at the list before learning is also sometimes nice to see what’s coming.
Also, you can use the ignore feature to allow learning a specific number of words. For instance, say a lesson has 10 words to learn, but you’d like to learn 3 today. Ignore all but the 3 you want to learn and start the learning. After, unignore the rest. It’s a bit of extra trouble but it’s worth the ability to customize your work load.
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Note about the previous “一分钱一分货” pronunciation - I asked a friend and was reminded that “一” follows a similar rule as “不”. That being, when pronounced alone, it’s first tone. When pronounced directly before a fourth tone, it becomes a second tone. Before anything else it becomes fourth tone, so you were right in setting it up with two fourth tones.
A handful more modifications as well:
HSK 4 missing words
赶上 – add “to keep up with” currently only “keep up with” works
丢掉 – add “to lose” as an alternate definition
天桥- would appreciate adding “overpass”, a common definition in the dictionary is “pedestrian bridge” as well
相比- add “to compare” (not sure if 相比 sometimes or ever is used as the current noun “comparison” )
热量 – add “heat” and the singular “calorie”. Just as a note, from my experience in casual talk people will say the loan word “卡路里” when just casually talking about diet calories. So 热量 seems to be the actual scientific heat measurement of a calorie.
HSK 4 missing words
美食 - add the singular “delicacy”
留住 - The current definition here is “to leave behind” which I think is more in line with the definition of 留. The MDBG here says “to ask sb to stay / to keep sb for the night / to await (classical)” but after reading example sentences on JuKuu, I get the feel that this is used very similar to how we use “to keep” in everyday speech along with a lot of its meanings, not sure how often its used nowadays but i’ll ask around. Maybe dictionary definitions might be best though.
办公 - add “to work”
主管 - add “in charge” “responsible for”
相距 - change “xiang1 zhu4” to “xiang1 ju4”
世纪末 - change “shi4 jie4 mo4” to “shi4 ji4 mo4”
相互 - add “mutual” to the list of answers. As a note, I looked up 互相 (HSK 4 vocab) and 相互 out of curiosity to find the difference, which in short form is that 互相 is only used as an adverb while 相互 can also be used as an adjective and can be combined with the form 间 to form a noun. What I get from this is that when in doubt, use 相互 until I can further practice subtle/colloquial usages. For a more long-winded explanation, here’s an explanation I took from baidu answers:
①词义和句法功能有所不同.“互相”只用作副词,一般只作状语；“相互”除了用作副词作状语之外,还可用作形容词作定语,如“相互关系”“相互作用”等.
②词的搭配不同.“相互”可以与方位词“间”“之间”组成方位词组（短语）,一起充当定语或状语,如“他们一定能感觉到相互间深切的鼓舞和期待”,“他们是一个阶级的骨肉兄弟,相互之间有着本阶级的许多共同语言”；“互相”则不能这样用.
③“相互”还可以用在“是……的”格式中,如“怕是相互的,我怕他,他也怕我”；“互相”一般不这样用.
【误】对于生活在过去的地质时代的无数生物的互相关系,我们所知道的就更少了.（“互相”不能作定语,故应改为“相互”）
HSK 5 missing words
兟 - add “to advance” (wasn’t able to find "willing to improve in MDBG)
Note: Because of ease and convenience of use when creating courses I use ArchChinese as my main dictionary (it has features other dictionaries don’t have). It seems to agree, for the most part, with MDBG and pleco but whenever there is doubt I always go with ArchChinese. The only thing that can trump it are my paper dictionaries.
HSK 4 missing words
赶上 – add “to keep up with” currently only “keep up with” works
*Main definition changed to “to keep up with”, hidden alt “keep up with” added.
丢掉 – add “to lose” as an alternate definition
*Done.
天桥- would appreciate adding “overpass”, a common definition in the dictionary is “pedestrian bridge” as well
*I’m not sure about “overpass” but I have added visible alts “pedestrian bridge” and “overhead walkway”.
相比- add “to compare” (not sure if 相比 sometimes or ever is used as the current noun “comparison” )
*Changed the main definition to “to compare”.
热量 – add “heat” and the singular “calorie”. Just as a note, from my experience in casual talk people will say the loan word “卡路里” when just casually talking about diet calories. So 热量 seems to be the actual scientific heat measurement of a calorie.
*Removed “calories” and added “quantity of heat” as the main definition as per my paper dictionary. Visible alts “heat” and “calorific value” added from MDBG.
美食 - add the singular “delicacy”
*Changed the main definition to “culinary delicacy”, “delicacy” added as hidden alt.
留住 - The current definition here is “to leave behind” which I think is more in line with the definition of 留. The MDBG here says “to ask sb to stay / to keep sb for the night / to await (classical)” but after reading example sentences on JuKuu, I get the feel that this is used very similar to how we use “to keep” in everyday speech along with a lot of its meanings, not sure how often its used nowadays but I’ll ask around. Maybe dictionary definitions might be best though.
*I’ll think about this one for a while.
办公 - add “to work”
*Changed the main definition to “to work (esp. in an office)” and added “to handle official business” as a visible alt.
主管 - add “in charge” “responsible for”
*Main definition changed to “in charge”. Visible alts “manager” and “responsible for” added.
相距 - change “xiang1 zhu4” to “xiang1 ju4”
*Done.
世纪末 - change “shi4 jie4 mo4” to “shi4 ji4 mo4”
*Done.
相互 - add “mutual” to the list of answers. As a note, I looked up 互相 (HSK 4 vocab) and 相互 out of curiosity to find the difference, which in short form is that 互相 is only used as an adverb while 相互 can also be used as an adjective and can be combined with the form 间 to form a noun. What I get from this is that when in doubt, use 相互 until I can further practice subtle/colloquial usages. For a more long-winded explanation, here’s an explanation I took from baidu answers:
①词义和句法功能有所不同.“互相”只用作副词,一般只作状语；“相互”除了用作副词作状语之外,还可用作形容词作定语,如“相互关系”“相互作用”等.
②词的搭配不同.“相互”可以与方位词“间”“之间”组成方位词组（短语）,一起充当定语或状语,如“他们一定能感觉到相互间深切的鼓舞和期待”,“他们是一个阶级的骨肉兄弟,相互之间有着本阶级的许多共同语言”；“互相”则不能这样用.
③“相互”还可以用在“是……的”格式中,如“怕是相互的,我怕他,他也怕我”；“互相”一般不这样用.
【误】对于生活在过去的地质时代的无数生物的互相关系,我们所知道的就更少了.（“互相”不能作定语,故应改为“相互”）
*A little time is needed for this one.
HSK 5 missing words
兟 - add “to advance” (wasn’t able to find "willing to improve in MDBG)
*I’ve added to advance but I will need to investigate this further.
Many thanks! I’ll switch to ArchChinese for reference in these courses for consistency.
-Would it be possible to duplicate the HSK 5 course and add the “red” version sometime soon vs. after the blue version is done? It would really help doing them alongside each other instead of going back later to work on that other method of recall, even if that means only having the initial 90 or so words in red and then waiting for blue to be complete for the rest.
-I was looking for the HSK4 Masterclass and wasn’t able to find it in search or in the courses under your profile. Has it been changed to another name or is it the old name for hsk 4 missing words?
-A few entry notes:
HSK 4 missing words
天桥- as for “overpass,” I meant for it to add a common regional English option since “crossover” seemed to be that, though I couldn’t find crossover in the Merriam-Webster English dictionary or the ArchChinese translations. “Pedestrian bridge” and “overhead walkway” work fine otherwise.
HSK 5 missing words
致 – add visible definitions “to send” “to cause” “to deliver” “to present”. I’d suggest adding these before “fine” since its first appearance in hsk 5 as “导致” is not using the ‘fine/delicate” meanings.
待 - currently “to stay” is listed with it’s pair “dai1”. Alternate pronunciation and meanings of (dai4) “to wait” and “to treat” should be added (at least as hidden options)
Regular HSK 4 blue
公布 - For the red version, both “to publicly announce” and “to announce publicly” are options. In blue, only one of these is acceptable and “to publish” is the main visible answer. Could you make “to announce publicly” “to publicly announce” “announce publicly” “publicly announce” alts? Visible or not is fine.
Cheers
-Would it be possible to duplicate the HSK 5 course and add the “red” version sometime soon vs. after the blue version is done? It would really help doing them alongside each other instead of going back later to work on that other method of recall, even if that means only having the initial 90 or so words in red and then waiting for blue to be complete for the rest.
*I’m afraid it’s just too much work and very time consuming to do anything but copy the finished blue course.
-I was looking for the HSK4 Masterclass and wasn’t able to find it in search or in the courses under your profile. Has it been changed to another name or is it the old name for HSK 4 missing words?
*Here it is:
*I’m quite proud of this course because of the full native speaker audio. The girl has a very nice voice. Please note, however, that it is not bug-free. I took it from public to private so I could focus on the HSK 5 courses. Feel free to give it a try.
HSK 4 missing words
天桥- as for “overpass,” I meant for it to add a common regional English option since “crossover” seemed to be that, though I couldn’t find crossover in the Merriam-Webster English dictionary or the ArchChinese translations. “Pedestrian bridge” and “overhead walkway” work fine otherwise.
I totally agree. “crossover” is the definition provided by memrise and I’m learning not to trust memrise definitions at all. The main definition changed to “pedestrian bridge”. Both “crossover” and “overpass” added as hidden alts, hidden because I dislike both of them. As far as dictionaries go I prefer to use WordWeb. Not that I wish to get caught up in a debate but I would never use an American-English dictionary.
HSK 5 missing words
致 – add visible definitions “to send” “to cause” “to deliver” “to present”. I’d suggest adding these before “fine” since its first appearance in hsk 5 as “导致” is not using the ‘fine/delicate” meanings.
*Done.
待 - currently “to stay” is listed with it’s pair “dai1”. Alternate pronunciation and meanings of (dai4) “to wait” and “to treat” should be added (at least as hidden options)
*This has been bothering me too, Done.
Regular HSK 4 blue <-- Im assuming HSK 5
公布 - For the red version, both “to publicly announce” and “to announce publicly” are options. In blue, only one of these is acceptable and “to publish” is the main visible answer. Could you make “to announce publicly” “to publicly announce” “announce publicly” “publicly announce” alts? Visible or not is fine.
*Done.
SoL
No worries about the “red” missing words course, I’ll just start one up.
The HSK 4 mastercourse seems very useful. It looks like the audio is missing after level 21 though so maybe I’ll start learning it when that’s up.
If you don’t mind me adding alts/hidden answers by going through logical ArchChinese and MDBG comparisons as well as noting definition usage rates for words with multiple meanings then feel free to add me as a contributor on the HSK 4/5 missing words courses and I can do this without having to bug you each time.
In the meantime here’s some more words I’ve come across, I’ve suggested a more generous number of definitions here because for some of these words I think it’s important to display these alts from the beginning of learning. Speaking of, I still think I must have 20-30 words from HSK 1-4 where I am forever in a state of doubt because only months/years later did I realize I was being quizzed on the same character but with different definition/tone entries “Oh that’s right 约 is “yao1”. Oh that’s right约is yue1. Oh that’s right约 is yao1. Oh that’s right约 is yue1. Months later…Wait…”
:
** HSK 4 missing words**
保修 – change “waranty” to “warranty”
HSK 5 missing words
驾 – add “to drive” currently “to harness” is the only accepted answer. Both 驾 and 驶 have different meanings in terms of sailing and piloting that I think all sum up nicely with the drive definition.
陆 – add “shore” “continent” “land” and add pinyin “lu4” in both lessons
繁 – add “many” “in great numbers” (these are the meanings that lend to 繁荣)
源- add “root” “origin”
荣 – add “glory” and “honor”
艳 – add “colorful/colourful” as alts (not sure about this since it’s in different in different dictionaries, but it does lend to 鲜艳. Perhaps the “sexy” and “voluptuous” definitions slowly turned to something as standing out as colorful which was then used in an actual word that referred to visible color/brightness.
厷 – add “upper arm”
慧 – add “intelligence”
挑 – add “to pick” and possibly something noting it’s shoulder pole carrying meaning.
Cheers
Hi, sorry for this (probably answered somewhere but I haven’t been able to find a definitive answer) question. In the hsk 1-5 courses do the higher numbered courses also cover the content in the lower ones. Eg HSK1 has 400 words, then HSK 2 has 625 then 1200, 2100 etc. Is the best route to do all the courses 1 through 5 or will I find all the content repeated?
Thanks
Yes the best route is to do 1-5 and yes the content will be repeated in all the courses. Previousy, memrise had a function called “auto-ignore”. This would allow you to start a new course (like HSK 2), click “auto-ignore”, and all content you learned in other courses would be ignored in that new course. Since some words have multiple entries and are in different databases, it wasn’t perfect, but it was very helpful. Memrise removed the feature a year or two ago to a lot of backlash.
This doesn’t have to be a negative though. Go through HSK 1, and once you get to HSK 2, take a look at your word list for the day to familiarize yourself a bit. If you see words you’ve learned, ignore them by clicking “ignore” in the upper right and ignoring any words you want from the word list.
This ignore feature gives you more control actually if you ever want to only learn, say, 2 words a day. You can ignore all words on a list except for what you want to learn, learn the words, and then unignore the others afterwards.
(**Note, if you learn this way for a lesson, after you “unignore” a previously ignored word and then begin a session to learn it, the session will immediately begin with the quiz instead of showing the word definition screen as normally happens when learning a new word. This can be alleviated with reviewing the words before the quiz, as well as using the “Zhongwen” ad-on to your browser where by running your mouse over chinese characters, it displays the translation.)
I would suggest first going through HSK 1-3. All these courses should have a “red” picture as the courses title picture. When you get to HSK 4 and 5, you will see a “blue” course that quizzes in the same way. The HSK 4-5 “red” courses will only have one lesson per word list (instead of having 1 lesson for Chinese and 1 for pinyin). I advise strongly if you have the time to take both the blue and red courses side-by-side when you get to these levels. The red courses prompt you with English resulting in your having to translate that word in your head and connecting that meaning to the Chinese. It also requires you to input Chinese, if you do this input by typing on a pc, it’s the closest you will get to enforcing the “writing” part of your brain without actually writing.
From my experience, the “blue” courses enforce general understanding and reading, while the red courses standout benefit is the part of your brain you would use when you are in mid-conversation and say to yourself “aw shit…how do you say “cultivate”?” I found that words I forget that I learned in the blue courses, I will actively in mid conversation try to remember by association with where I was when I learned it and whether I can remember how the character looks which is sometimes a 2-4 step process. With words words I forget that I learned in the red courses, they will often pop up by only debating on the English word (ie. “cultivate…cultivate…uhhhhhh 养成!”).
That said, that’s obviously only in my personal experience, but as someone who started off learning only by speaking and podcasts for a couple years, I’ve kind of been able to see how my memory enforces itself when I introduce different learning styles. I’m still not sure for instance if i’ll go back and actually attempt to be able to fluidly write Chinese with a pen, but I do respect much more now that reading-listening-speaking-writing not only form as passive and active variations of learning, but they actively build on top of one another and assist in recall by just adding another layer of association available to you.
I made the following changes to the HSK 3 red course:
- Added the alts “_ok” and “_okay” to “行 hang2”.
- Added the alt “_xing2” to “行 hang2”
- Added the alt “_hang2” to “行 xing2”
- Added the alt “_chong2” to “重 zhong4”
- Added the alt “_zhong4” to “重 chong2”
Refer to https://www.memrise.com/course/983/hsk-level-3/1/ to see why I made those changes.
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Thank you so much for this explanation. I’ve been trying to make sense of the chaos that is the Memrise HSK courses and thanks to you I finally understand how they are structured. I’m still on HSK1 Red right now, and I’ve been torn over whether to swap to another method in anticipation of the future courses not working in the same way, but now I’m feeling much better about it.
One question though - since the later courses have all the vocab for of the earlier ones, is there a disadvantage to simply start with a later one e.g. 4 or 5? As I understand it:
The advantages are:
Don’t have to bother with ignoring/duplication
Fewer courses to maintain
While the disadvantages are:
The order in the later courses isn’t really suitable for a beginner
Many basic building blocks e.g. the tones aren’t in the later ones
I was considering finishing HSK1 Red (should be done in another two weeks or so) and then skipping ahead, at least to HSK3 but maybe further. Any thoughts?
I think after all this time you and I understand each other pretty well so I have added you to both courses. I only ask that you add all U.S. spelling variations as hidden alts and publish all changes in this forum. You may alter entries but please don’t add new ones to the HSK 5 course.
As for the masterclass course the learning direction seems messed up. I will fix it.
SoL
HSK 4 Masterclass is up and running with full audio.
Hey, no problem! I know it’s kind of stressful picking a learning direction because you don’t want to invest pointless hours of learning. I’m going to give you a long-winded answer here just in case you’re interested in more than reading.
I think you have the advantages/disadvantages about right as far as skipping ahead, but I think you might be underestimating a bit your point “the order in the later courses isn’t really suitable for a beginner.” Skipping to say, HSK 5 or 6 would be amazing if certain functionality was accessible,
(The kind of functionality i’m talking about is the ability to start learning the full HSK 6 course, have all words of that complete list associated with certain of the 6 levels, then have a checklist that will show/hide those words depending on your level. Unfortunately this is not the kind of functionality memrise is focused on currently grumble grumble.)
but unfortunately it’s not, and you will be faced with tons of words you’ll have to ignore and often some that peak your interest and distract your learning. The HSK test vocabulary is not perfect, and fully learning through HSK 6 will get you to a B2-C1 learning level vs. closer to native fluency as in other countries’ language testing systems, but the HSK still does a decent job in putting a functional amount of characters and words together that compliment each other for basic speech and reading comprehension. Again, they could have done better. After even the early levels of HSK, you will end up knowing characters, their meanings, and their pronunciations that some Chinese will have no idea about. You’ll also learn characters that you think you can use in speech but you’re actually throwing out an archaic form of some formal royal address that makes absolutely no sense. Despite this, you will end up with a pretty cool set of tools that allow you to make sense of things and it starts paying off ~ HSK 4. So in short, I would kind of say to just struggle with order as it is, but maybe someone else has experience in doing that way and it works better than I’m thinking.
Getting ahead a bit, you’ll also notice that in higher levels, HSK 4 and 5 maybe, the progression of what you learn stops being very constructive. Instead of learning a character that adds an extra few strokes to something you already knew, you’re faced with a two character word, both of which have no components you’re familiar with except for the very basic. When you get here, look in to SoL’s “missing words” courses which help with learning those single characters.
To supplement vocabulary, look up “Chinese Grammar Wiki” on google. If you learn these points well, you will be miles ahead of most. There are memrise courses devoted to each of the wiki levels, A1 through C1, made by Ole that help a lot. Since these deal with sentences, I would advise taking these courses on the app for tapping tests.
For the HSK courses, I only use a desktop because I have the impression that the review algorithm is different than the app and I have noted that I retain vocab words much better learned on the website vs. app.
Aside from that, practice your tones until you sound like a Chinese person. Pay attention when you come across words where natives say things in multiple ways. Sometimes it’s dialect, sometimes their ear does not differentiate the sounds because your native language has two distinct sounds where Chinese does not differentiate (行 xing2, sounding like “sheeng” and sometimes “sheeUng”, for example). Also I would highly recommend Popup Chinese as a podcast that gets you used to actual speech. Some of the other podcasts have great material but I cannot get over the new age happiness in some of their banter.
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