Why are there three or more versions of official German for English Speakers?

Official Memrise Courses German
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I understand from reading previous forum posts that distinctions are made based upon UK vs US English, which is sort of understandable. However there are at least three discrete versions in Memrise of German 1 for English speakers if not more. Each has wildly different numbers of vocabulary words (148, 197, and 476 ). I only noticed this due to myself and family members starting German together and we all had different leader-boards and vocabulary.

Looking at the official Memrise profile there are two listed, but one of us is using still a third. Elsewhere on the forums someone has listed links to four. And to be clear, these are not the old A1, A2 programs.

So I guess my question are really:

  1. how did we all end up with different German 1 decks when we all had the same version of English selected for our profiles?

  2. is there a way beyond one’s profile to understand which is for UK and which is for US speakers?

  3. is there any way to see when an official deck was last updated or to keep track of which one is the ‘current’ officially supported one?

I like Memrise a lot based on my experiences so far and we have a few year accounts paid for now, but this is really kind of an awkward user experience.

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Hello :slight_smile:
I do not speak English very well, but I will try to explain.

This is because, from time to time, Memrise renews the official course. The courses that appear on the web page of courses, are the current courses. So, depending on when you added the course (and whether it is British or American English), this may vary.

I do not know when the German courses were changed, but speaking of the course I do, Japanese, there are currently 5 official courses for some Japanese courses.

For example, in the beginning, memrise had Japanese 1-3 for British English and then American English was included. Between the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017 (estimate based on what I read in the forum, because I did not make memrise yet), these courses were changed by new courses, and started to have Japanese 1-7 for British English and a few months later to American English. About a month ago, memrise added Japanese 0, and switched Japanese 1-2, only to British English. Over time, I believe this will be done for American English as well. So, at this point, Japanese 1-2 has 5 English versions.

As I said before, those who access the web, in the course page, get the latest version. Older courses can only be viewed by those who already have the course added on your page, or get an old link.

From what I read in the forum, I did not find any history of the updates, I just followed the comments. And also looking at the web page of courses, through the difference in the number of people who are learning the course.

For example, compare the number of people in the first course of German to British English speakers. It seems that the initial courses have been changed recently.

Already in the German course for American English speakers this does not seem to have been done, at least at the moment.

PS: Sorry for my English.

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It is as @Milamy says.

Recently, the German course has been updated, and searching for German 1, 2 etc. will take you to the newest version; however, the old versions still exist, but just don’t show up on the search page or on on the courses tab in your profile.

To be honest, the old German course was by far superior (if marginally easier). The new one has monster levels (60± often), introduces long sentences before actual beginners can really get the hang of identifying words in isolation, and seems to be geared more towards people intending on taking a holiday in Germany than actually learning properly. The old course was slower but more useful if you really want to learn the language (I have links to all the old courses, which still work just fine, if you like? It might solve the problem of your group being on different leaderboards).

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Thank you both for your replies. Milamy, your English is pretty good. I wouldn’t worry about it. :slight_smile:

Ok, so thinking this through… I guess I can understand each new version of a ‘deck’ being an independent course number in the database. Since this is all about memorization, there really isn’t a good way to update decks from underneath people while they are still using them. It would create chaos for the users.

Still, it’s just so odd. Trying to sync up courses is missing two important features. 1) the publish date for a course and 2) the learner’s language (applies mostly to the UK/US English divide)

For example, current UK/US German 1 for English speakers:

current UK German 1 #2022170 23.4k users
current UK German 2 #2022171 2.35k users

current US English German 1 #1180558 441k users
current US English German 2 #1180559 49.3k users

^^^^^ note the sequential database number keys for each

My German 1 (started only two weeks ago) #1984449

^^^^^ course number doesn’t fit in, how did I even get that one?

Anywho…

Isharr, I would be thankful for any course recommendations. Right now we have settled on UK English German since Memrise appears to be a UK based company and those course version probably gets more attention than the US English ones.

-vielen Dank

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You are right that the UK versions of the course get more attention — they are always updated first. The most current version of German from English UK is actually a bit nasty, though; if you really want to learn right (understand the different parts of a sentence instead of just memorising a bunch of phrases (yes, I know that’s the point of Memrise, but still…), you should go through the previous German from English UK course set (which is very similar to the American, but, unlike the new UK course, gives some actual foundation).

I personally do have the current UK German 1 (can confirm: 2022170), but I also have the old, simple first-wordlist version of this course (1839424).

These are the previous versions of German UK 1 (which is mostly just a wordlist for beginner vocab acquisition), 2 and 3. They are, I find, a lot less touristy and a bit more useful overall. The new versions of these courses are useful, too, but far more so once you’ve already completed the other versions, I think; that’s how I’m doing them, anyway — they share some words, sure, but are in no way the same course.

If you ever need the old versions of any other language that’s recently been overhauled (for example, French UK 1, 2, 3), I have those too.

edit: Also recommend:

It is dry stuff but invaluable if you want to acquire isolated vocab.

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And, if you had any question as to why I was so eager to help with this issue in the first place, see my first ever forum post on here, lol. Pretty much the same issue… I never did get a group for German, in the end.