Mandarin Chinese 1 - 3 by Memrise (closed)

Official Memrise Courses Chinese
1

Please post any feedback and suggestions about the official Memrise-created Chinese courses here.
Our Chinese language specialist @xia.fan will then look into it.

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Hi, I’m enjoying the Mandarin Chinese 1 very much, but what bothers me is how the entry of pinyin is counted very arbitrarily as right or wrong.
Examples: I understand = wodong (but wo dong is wrong), I am very well = wo hen hao (but wo henhao is wrong). As Chinese characters are not “linked” as words with Latin alphabets are, can you not make the programme also accept pin yin entries that are “unconnected”?

Thanks, J

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Hi, thanks for your comment. Yes, the spaces in pinyin should be ignored and our tech team is looking into it. At the moment I can only add alternatives manually whenever an user points out a problem. I checked “hén hǎo”, “wó hén hǎo” and “wódǒng” and the alternatives of them had been added already, so either way should be marked correct. Could you let me know the exact items that caused you this pinyin problem?

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Hi, thanks for your reply. Until now I only noticed with the examples I gave you, but will look out for more.
Btw, “wo dong” is still marked as wrong (well, at least it’s yellow, not red).

Another question: the reply I gave was “good; well” and was marked wrong. The correct reply was “well; good”. Can you look into that as well?

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I would like pinyin using numbers for tones to also be accepted. My guess is that this shouldn’t be something difficult to achieve. I always make databases of words that I learn for reviewing. I always remember words using pinyin with numbers. Which makes it a bit annoying when I -out of habit- write the pinyin with numbers and it gets marked as wrong.

Why do I use numbers? Eventhough I have a french layout KB (with relative easy access to accents), typing pinyin with numbers is still a lot faster.

Overall I’m liking the course, it’s of a better quality compared to many others that I’ve checked out. It has a great buildup.

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thank you for having brought the idea to us and the Chinese courses are still under development. We will do our best to accommodate for as many user wishes as we can :slight_smile:

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Hi, since today (16 November 2016), the Mandarin Chinese 2 course requires strict typing. E.g. it shows the character for “earth; dust”. And I have to type both. In the past I could type either “earth” or “dust” and it was accepted. If I type only "earth"now, it tells me the answer is wrong (red), and I need to type both. Can you change that back to “normal” or was it a conscious decision that we now need to know the exact answer?
Seems to be the case also in other courses, but in Mandarin it bothers me most.

Thanks, J.

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I’ve noticed this in other courses as well. It’s not as bad for this course, since there are relatively few character to english quizzes. It seems like this is a site wide thing, possibly alternate answers got purged or something.

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The Mandarin 1 course has wó dông and wô bù dông (and lots of other phrases with wô). It seems that the pinyin accent is wrong for wó dông… Unless I don’t understand? :wink:

(Sorry my third tones are all upsidedown. I don’t know how to type them properly.)

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At the german version is a mistake: In Level 5 of Chinesisch 1 is the word “Herz”, but the Pinyin isn’t correct, because, there are some chinese charakters instead of pinyin.

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That’s correct pin yin. It’s a very common rule where if there are two third tones in a row, the first third tone becomes a second tone.

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The rule about 2 consecutive third tones only applies to pronunciation, not writing. One would still write it as two consecutive third tones, just verbally pronounce (the resulting characters) as if they were a second and then third tone.

Edit: of course I don’t write pinyin, as I use Zhuyin instead.

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Hi I am taking Mandarin 2. In the family members section, sometimes when you are asked to type the pinyin for an English word, after you type in an click enter the word disappears, so you basically have to click the arrow to accept that you got it wrong. This happens on words like meimei, pengyou, and a few others. Maybe there is something wrong with how the words are stored?
Also the translation of “mum” for mama instead of “mom” or “mother” is silly. Also for jiejie and gege, usually people say “older brother” rather than “elder brother”.

Definitely enjoying the courses. However, I was thinking maybe it would be better to have some basic things like about your family earlier in the course rather than have basically the first course and a half just be about various types of food. Usually the first thing you learn in a language course is to introduce yourself and say something about your family, etc. Like “I am a student at the university”, but here they come much later. Not necessarily bad just maybe a little weird. But perhaps the courses are geared to a tourist who needs to talk about food.

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Thanks a lot! it has been corrected!

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Hi, thank you for pointing it out. I’ve added alternatives for the item “土”.

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is there going to be a 4th course edition and so on?

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Mandarin Chinese 2 level sixteen

Why is de (的) treated differently in these two sentences:

  • kāfēi shĂŹ wǒ zuĂŹ xǐhuānde yǐnliĂ o
  • zhè xiē dōu shĂŹ wǒ zuĂŹ xǐhuān de

Also, is there a reason why na xie and zhe xie are spelled as two words? Otherwise the course seems to be very eager to add grammatical words to the root word it modifies, e.g. women (我们), nage (那个), and bushi (不是).

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Thanks for letting me know! The issues have been fixed now :slight_smile:

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Hi,
This is the second day studying Mandarin on Memrise and finding the interface smooth.

However…

There is a recurring error where the last syllable is denoted as 4:th tone instead of neutral. Ex. : zhège is written as “zhègè”, in the section “What do you like”.

I have not checked many words; so far the issue at least is with “ge”, when it is inserted and should become neutral.

It seems to be a common mistake writing mistake to make with the fourth tone on the last syllable generally and not changing it to neutral.
My teacher for example keeps writing piàoliàng when it should be written “piàoliang” (beautiful).

20

There is an error in the French version of Chinese 2 (Chinois 2). The phrase “zhègè háizi shì tāde nǚer” is translated as “cet enfant est ma fille”. It should be “sa fille” (his/her daughter, not my daughter).