Hi everyone, I’ve been learning some Bengali words and thought I’d subscribe so that I could get access to some audo/video features. So I bought a quarterly subscription, but now nothing new is appearing on the options. Of course I’m happy to make a financial contribution to the Memrise/Decks project, but I feel a little ripped off. Am I missing something? Thank you, Dhonnobad
I am sorry you feel misled and I understand your frustration.
The extra features such as pronunciation and videos are only available for the official memrise courses, which only offer courses in a limited number of languages (albeit in numerous language directions, e.g. English for Russian speakers, as well as many other combinations). I am pretty sure that Bengali is not on that list.
So, even though you have paid for a quarterly subscription, that will not unlock those features for Bengali, only for the languages already available as official memrise courses.
According to the list on this forum, these are the languages offered as official memrise courses:
I hope the memrise team will come up with a way of communicating this information better to future subscribers so that they don’t feel misinformed and cheated like you did.
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Hi there, also learning bangla here. Which courses are you doing? Are you using the Memrise app, the website, or both? Do you know about Decks? If not, see … the rest of the forum for discussion. Basically the user generated and the official courses are being separated.
As Amanda has explained, all Bengali is community courses (user generated content, UGC), no official courses. Some UGC has audio - so you can do the listening tests through the app if you are a pro member. The UGC is also accessed through the decks website, where you can do the listening tests (and difficult words) without a subscription. I don’t think you can add video to a user generated course.
I haven’t yet found a bengali course with good audio yet anyway! You may have spotted a gap there. Maybe one day I will record some audio and create a course.
AmandaN and JoolesBH,
Thank you very much for your replies and explanations. I had wondered whether Bengali was an official course. But then, after I completed a certain number of Bengali modules, the website offered me a 20% discount on subscription. You can see why I then I assumed that this would unlock more features for this language. Oh well.
Yes I’m still looking for good audio-visual Bengali content for beginners-to-intermediate. I tried Mango languages, which was ok but limited. I think I’ll try to work through the audio conversations on either Hanne-Ruth Thompson or William Radice’s books which come with CDs, and maybe supplement it with some Bengali cartoons on youtube. I don’t have ready access to a conversation partner at the moment. If you have any other suggestions, Jooles, let me know
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Yep - as Amanda also said, communication and information is lacking to say the least. I didn’t know about ‘official’ courses, I saw Memrise personnel’s names on some courses and assumed those were as “official” as they got!
I get asked to subscribe a lot on the app, 50% off…I was a subscriber until very recently, mainly for downloading courses.
Bengali - I have no lead on good audio materials. My family is Bengali, I shamefully don’t speak or read it, but know how it should sound. Are you going for Indian-Bengali or Bangladeshi? I have the Radice book but not the CD. I would offer to be a conversation buddy but I am a bit socially anxious and also I really don’t know grammar or sentence structure, just words, mostly food and health ones! Maybe one day?