I took the liberty of starting this thread for typos and such that I find as I’m making my way through Memrise’s excellent Japanese course.
I have come across 2 or 3 these last couple days and posted them here. However, I thought it would be more efficient to make a general thread rather than keep creating new ones all the time.
If you feel this is inappropriate or see any cause to close this thread, feel free do so (although I would highly appreciate being notified) and I will just revert back to much previous approach.
Thank you for spotting and reporting these! I’ve made the changes and you should be able to see the changes once you log out and log in again.
どうもありがとう！
Also noticed during classic review, so I can’t say excactly where in the course it is.
Japanese: え〜、見えないですね！
English: You don’t look it!
Furigana: えー、 みえないですね！
Correction suggestion: Should the ‘dash’ following え in Japanese not be a ー and not a ～? This one is especially unfortunate because it is a part of the typed in answer.
English: He is surprisingly chatty, you know? Talking about a little brother, although this is somewhat confusing during classic review, if one has forgotten the original context.
Romanji: igai to oshaberi desu yo
Correction suggestion: Should Romanji not just be “igaito oshaberi desu yo” without a space between igai and to, which makes it seem like it says “igai with” or “igai and”. Just to reduce confusion.
Literal translation (Suggested correction): which from isか？
I may be wrong (probably am) But I thought どこ was “where” and ぢちら was “which”. Of course individual words and their translations are heavily reliant on context, but I thought the literal translation-section was so that students could see what every word in the sentence meant individually, and not have to go back an look the translation of every word up for every new sentence they’ve forgotten. That’s why there’s an actual translation and a literal one. This particular “literal translation” seems to be somewhere in between, which doesn’t really help much.
Thank you for your attention to these details!
It’s good to know some people are reading our literal translations, I hear that some users don’t find that function of showing literal translations completely necessary.
Anyway, I’ve made some changes to the items based on your suggestions. Please log out and log in again to see the changes in your app.
I think the literal translation is strictly necessary for proper understanding. It is immensly frustrating to have to look up every word all the time, and therefore it is a huge help, when the sentences are presented “chronologically”, so that one is able to understand every single piece of the puzzle that makes any given sentence.
One thing that I can imagine people reasonably adressing with criticism is when the literal translation does not translate the sentence itself but instead picks apart 2/3 individual pieces of a longer kanji, which does occur somewhat frequently. This doesn’t really help and only serves to confusing in my experience. I assume this has been carried over from the original American course. (I also noticed that へ is also only listed as “he” and not “e”, which I also suspect comes from the seemingly less thorough American course).
If I were in charge, I think I would add another line where I would give the translation for every single kanji used in a sentece, and only the kanji. You could call it “Kanji that appear:”. (I’m unsure if kanji plural is kanjis, but I trust you’ll correct me on this). These would also be chronological. I am quite convinced that learners would be able to differentiate between kanji, hiragana and katakana.
I think the more information that is available when learning a language as complicated and novel (for western learners) any and all information is useful. I’m not just learning new words. I’m also trying to wrap my head around grammar, particles and no less than 3 new alphabets. Just because the information is there, it doesn’t mean I will use it every time, but they can be great supporting wheels in learning to ride this bike, that is the Japanese language.
And, sure there is the concern that too much information is provided so that the page becomes a bit cluttered, but I think is this case it would be more beneficial than detrimental by quite a dignificant margin.
Actually, now that we’re speaking of larger edits I would also suggest on level 0 that all the syllables (hiragana and katagana) be categorised so that when you are ask to put in translate “he” you don’t aciddentally put in かれ or へ (hiragana) as an answer because ヘ (katagana) are different when you type them in with a keyboard.
My suggestion is instead of asking the learner to translate “he” the question should be “he (katagana)”.
As a result of this issue I have countless words that have ended up in my “difficult words” (some of which are just furigana) even though I know them quite well.
My greater message is this: When trying to teach something which is so complicated (without an actual teacher present), it is paramount to be as precise as possible to avoid confusion. And of course you already know this, no one doubts that. But one example where the course seems to slip up is when for example a couple of words in a row have been about something and everything makes sense from the context, but then i review you run into “意外とおしゃべりですよ” as mentioned earlier is translated as “He is surprisingly chatty, you know?” yet から doesn’t appear anywhere, so you have you remember the conversation that the sentence came from which can be very confusing.
The official translation is a bit misleading. It’s make you think you have to use 旅. A better translation would be “I came here from Osaka” (which is also the more natural sentence in English). Consistency is key, especially when there is only one answer.
Again, kara is just from, isn’t it? So “Osaka from come-ました”. I am debating with myself whether an better literal translation would be “Osaka from come doた” or even “Osaka from come did”. I always think of ます as “do” even though it doesn’t translate perfectly 100% of the time (but probably 98%).
I don’t know really. mixing romanji and furigana can cause a lot of confusion especially in the beginning. It’s a difficult choice, but I’ve thought about it for a while and so thought I would share my thoughts.
Thank you for all the suggestions with detailed explanations!
Apologies for my late reply, we usually only check in on feedback once a week at the moment due to lack of resources. That doesn’t mean we care less, so keep your feedback coming!
I can’t answer all of them with equal details, but for the ones I could implement immediately, I have done so.
With the typing test with Hiragana/Katakana, I think what I want to do is to disable typing test for these alphabet items. We have tried adding “(katakana)” at the end of the Romaji before, but that overcrowded the screen when you have “a (hiragana)” “u (hiragana)” and so on as multiple options in tests, so we removed them. We should be teaching how to “type in Romaji” in a better way anyway, and it probably isn’t fitting to have it together with all the other word items.
What you picked up on with “意外とおしゃべりですよ” is very interesting. One thing that we should be explaining in the app is that “subjects are often omitted in Japanese sentences”. I tried to show that through examples (as there is no place for us to explain it well), but I can see now how that is not only unclear but also unfair as you can get the answer wrong assuming that you need to put the subject in. I will add the with-subject version as an alternative accepted answer for now, but I hope to fix this in a better way in the future.
I can’t quite agree that “do” is the best translation for “ます”, and keeping it as ます in the literal translation is to serve the purpose of how the previous verb conjugates when connecting to ます. However, another thing we don’t do at all (sadly can’t with currently functionality) is to teach verb conjugations and with that explanation lacking, I can see how the current literal translation can be confusing in some ways.
All these are very useful feedback and helps me understand what learners of Japanese pick up on. Thank you very much:))
リラックスできます (without よ) should be okay if one is just translating the words, but maybe “You’re welcome to relax” or even “Make yourself at home” (which I assume is the actual message you are trying to get across in the instance) is better when the よ is a part of it.
Oddly enough this actually makes sense to me as Danish speaker. The Danish translation here would be “du kan godt slappe af” (literally you can well relax) as opposed to “du kan slappe af” (literally, you can relax). Where the English translation is “one-sided” the Japanese, if I understand correctly, is part information but also at the very least equal part appeal/order/incision (there’s no fitting translation of the Danish “opfordring” in this context). The real Danish translation here would be “lad som om du er hjemme” (pretend you’re home).
I may be wrong here, but to me, since that relies on the context of previous statements about hot springs, the use of よ at the end is less of a command about going to relax, and more of a casual way of emphasizing how much you can relax. Like, rather than just kinda relaxing, you can, Iunno, super-relax is the kind of impression I get from it, rather than as some kind of command for you to go relax in the hot spring. Like, rather than “You can relax,” I kinda get the impression more of “You can chill pretty hard,” since I think it’s a pretty casual statement.
