I’ve been studying Japanese for some time, and something odd I noticed in Memrise is that some words, like dame, are written with katakana rather than hiragana even though they’re not loanwords. Can you look into this please? It’s slightly distracting to see a word that should be written in hiragana actually being written in katakana.
hi @jaimehlers91
Loan words is not the only use for Katakana.
And 駄目 can also be written using Katakana.
https://jisho.org/word/駄目
check the “other forms”
I reviewed your link, but the fact that it is possible to write a Japanese word using katakana does not mean that it is good to teach that it is written that way. Especially since it is actually a kanji, as you also showed.
It would be a good idea to get a native speaker’s opinion on the subject rather than pointing to what appears to be a specific dictionary usage as the reason to keep things the way they are.
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The katakana is used for dame because it is used to show shouting or emphasis.
In English, I can type “stop!” or “STOP!” Katakana accomplishes the same thing.
Yes, you can use it that way. The problem is that these words aren’t being used in a way that indicates that.
For example, the word used to teach “to quarrel”, “kenka suru”, is written with kenka being in katakana, even though it is actually a kanji word. This has the very real potential of confusing people who are learning Japanese.
I’d like to suggest that Memrise check for instances where Japanese words are being taught using katakana when they should not be.
I’m just responding to your question as another language learner. If you want to give feedback to Memrise, you are not doing that in this thread.
Okay, I thought I was supposed to use this forum for that. So where should I post my feedback so that the Memrise people will see it?