[Course Forum] "The New Practical Chinese Reader" - 1 by LisaMemrise

haha, I didn’t realise it was the same post, sorry Lien!

Dear @Toffa75, dear @xia.fan,

level 10, to which you are referring, is a bonus level. It only contains five items that are supposed to be an additional help if you want to start thinking about creating memes with tones. If they are not helpful for you, please feel free to simply ignore them.

Best wishes and happy learning,
donnerwoelkchen

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Sorry but when I’m using the mobile app I get the question “Sheldon” and have to answer with a number. This is very annoying and does nothing except make memes look stupid and useless.

Dear @Toffa75,
in order to ignore the words in the level, you actually have to login on your personal computer and ignore them there. You can use this link: http://www.memrise.com/course/98673/the-new-practical-chinese-reader-1/10/
After synching with your app, they will not show up any longer.
Cheers,
donnerwoelkchen

Hi Donner,

Has something changed on Memrise or our course? The algorithm has changeddetermining whether an answer is correct.

For example, Level 33 has the word 层 which means story or floor. The memrise definition is ‘story; floor’.

Previously typing either ‘story’ or ‘floor’ for the definition was correct, now you need to type both including the ;… the course definitions were designed to use these either/or so both would register as correct, as there are many words where typing all meanings is pointless.

Can you please have a look ASAP? I’m unable to review now…

Thanks

Hi @d003r,
unfortunately, I have no idea what happened. I did not change anything, so I suppose it’s probably about the general memrise algorithm and not specific to the NPCR course.
For now, I fixed level 33 manually, so it should work again. Please feel free to point me to any other problematic words you encounter.
Thank you so much for your help and happy learning,
donnerwoelkchen

hi,

have a look at other threads in the fora… then you know what is that all about

(Courses *suddenly* requiring either hyphens or even strict typing // Has there been a change in the way memrise treats commas?)

Hi Donner thank you so much for your quick response, I saw Joshua who is forum staff in one of the mods say that they are looking into it!

Cheers

Dear @Hydroptere and @d003r,

thanks a lot for your feedback! Good have an idea what might be going on. I really hope they’ll fix the problem soon. As long as it persists, I guess I’ll have to fix the most annoying words in the NPCR course manually to not impede the learners’ progress too severely.

All the best,
donnerwoelkchen

gern geschehen! (… ich persönlich werde allerlei memrise-bugs nicht ausbaden… keine Arbeit/Änderungen meinerseits, nur um allerlei Programmierfehler “auszugleichen”)

There is also a problem with the word suffering requiring all that comes after it too.

Hi Donner,

Memrise finally made a decision on the changes.

Word definitions that use ; as a separator allow any to be entered and registered as a correct answer.

Word definitions that use , as a separator require all words in their exact order to register as a correct answer.

Most of the earlier topics are correct but topics such as 10.1 and 10.2 all use , … is there any chance these can be reviewed and patched up to use ;?

Thanks,
d003r

Thanks a lot for the update, @d003r!

If these changes are permanent, it’ll probably to pay off to overhaul the whole course now. I’ll see what I can do but it might take a couple of days, so please bear with it for some more time.
If you find something from next week onwards, it will likely be something that I overlooked. As always, I’ll be very grateful for comments and help :slight_smile:

Happy learning,
donnerwoelkchen

In level 47 文 is listed with the meaning “pattern” but I can’t find this in any dictionary?
Other than that, just spotted a , instead of ; in level 65 and 69 (they use ; otherwise so I assume it’s an oversight). I’m glad this is still maintained :slight_smile:

The original meaning of 文 (紋) is mark; pattern; tattoo; etc. It is the ideogram of a man with a pattern/tattoo on his chest.

I think it lost this meaning in Chinese but it still means pattern in Japanese (Kanji) and Korean (Hanja).

Wiktionary is always a easy source for meanings/origins of different characters
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/文

But that’s etymology and also marked with “(Original form)” on wiki. I’m not sure if a Chinese-beginner-course is the right place for that. When I ask a dictionary it says “language / culture / writing” which is (meaning-wise) compliant with other words like 中文. https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=文
In Japanese I learned that kanji with a meaning of written text/composition/writing. The dictionary doesn’t say anything about “pattern” (except of wikipedia’s etymology section).

Yes, I agree with you. It just seemed that you didn’t know how 文 was related to pattern.
Actually the book itself tells you that the meaning of 文 is “written language” so that is probably what it should be changed to. 文 as a single character can’t be found in the books glossary but in one of the “Learn and write basic Chinese characters”-lessons.

From the book

Hey everybody,
I’m sorry my answer is late. I just moved to a new town and still don’t have any wifi, so getting online is a little bit tricky :grimacing:
Anyways, thank you so much for your inputs! I changed the translation of 文 to the meanings you suggested und replaced the commas. It’s great to have people who are so engaged here :smile:
If you have any other suggestions, I’ll be happy to hear them.
Happy learning,
donnerwoelkchen

Thanks a lot for your continuous improvements!