Hi, I’m new to memrise and am having trouble figuring out how to break up words within a sentence. At times the program will give me the word or sentence in English and ask me to type it in Japanese (I’m sorry…gomennasai) When it gives me a whole sentence I’m unsure where to break up the words. (My name is _____, Watashi no namae_____des) I break the words where they seem to make sense but I’m told I’m wrong even when I get all the characters correct.
Hello there! Really you just have to interpret, or memorize it.
Example from Japanese 1:
わたしのでんわばんごうは〜です = my phone number is …
Here the space is after the は particle, which should be noticeable since it’s followed by ‘〜’.
Example from Japanese 3:
わたしはぜひそうしたいのですが、あしたはやくおきなくてはいけません = I would love to, but I have to wake up early tomorrow
Here there is obviously a stop, pointed by the comma. So that’s where the space should be.
Japanese is kind of annoying seeing how they don’t have spaces. Hope that helps.
And if I misinterpreted the issue, then please re-explain.
Thank you. It seems to be happening when I’m expected to spell the hiragana sounds in English. So, for instance if it asks how to say “See you later.” I type “Choushi wa dou”. But when it asked for me to translate “I am well and I typed Watashi wa Genki desu.” it was wrong. I’m not sure how to break up the hiragana sounds into words.
Hope that makes sense.
Thanks
Okay then it seems it’s just like I said.
Okay first it’s ‘Watashi HA genki desu’. Not Wa. Eventhough it is read as wa, it is still the hiragana for ha ‘は’.
Second: in Japanese there are NO spaces; therefore it should be typed: ‘watashihagenkidesu’.
In all the Japanese Memrise courses, you only add a space when there is a ‘〜’ between two words, or when there is a comma in the Japanese sentence. (Like the examples I gave above^)
The ENTIRE exception in the courses is the first 10 words in Japanese 1 (in Romaji). Like ‘Choushi wa dou?’ (which means what’s up, not see you later).
These first words only exist because the users still don’t know hiragana and sentence formation in Japanese, the creators probably thought they should give them a head start. Which is why they are in Romaji.
Oh Thank you! I’ve completely forgotten about the ha vs wa. I’m sure that’s where it’s hanging me up. I feel like such a dummy. I was getting so frustrated with the program and as per usual it was “operator” error. LOL
No worries, it’s indeed annoying. But you’ll get used to it.
Happy learning!
Japanese does not use spaces, as you will know. The courses (actually they are more “excercises” than real courses) therefore tend to make up their own rules about spaces when using roumaji. However, some courses did that rather bad, by using the spaces rather randomly. Other courses did it quite good and regular. Some people argue “Japanese does not use spaces, therefore using spaces in roumaji is impossible or at least it’s impossible to do it in a good way.” That’s bullshit. No really spoken language uses spaces! It’s always a chain of rather unbroken sound, with only breaks (“spaces”) when out of breath. A good space system is by putting a space between a kana followed by a kanji, because the kana usually adjust the words, and therefore the last kana following a kanji or group of kanji, can be seen as a word border. In some case,s however, the words are written in kana, which makes it more difficult. Nevertheless, a noun; verb, adjective or adverb followed by kana, is a word. It looks to me as if some course builders in Memrise are a bit too amateuristic, or their knowledge of the language in which they make the course, isn’t good enough to have a good use of spaces.