Hi all,

It's been quite some time since I posted here or really even studied Japanese. There were some issues last year with Anki in part due to DMCA takedown requests in regards to stock photo images that were licensed by iKnow/Cerego for the Core 2000/6000 decks. That caused a lot of decks and materials to be set to private or lost including material I posted.

Recently, having a Spanish language bug via DuoLingo, I came across Memrise. As I like what they're trying to do, I've decided to try to export most of my material to their site. I'm hoping a few you can check out the set-up and offer critique. It's not perfect and I'm forced to create separate lessons for sentences but the benefit is worth that inconvenience. I have not uploaded all of my resources, though I intend to at least get the Basic Level into Memrise which should cover a few hundred hours of active study materials. 

Calling the entire series "Suggested Guide to Japanese Literacy"

SGJL 01 - Remembering the Hiragana in 3 Hours
SGJL 02 - Remembering the Katakana in 3 Hours

SGJL 03 - RTK/KO2k1 1-555
SGJL 04 - Tae Kim Guide to Japanese and A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar Pt 1
SGJL 05 - Core 2k/6k Basic Pt 1
SGJL Drama - ex: 絶対彼氏 Zettai Kareshi (Absolute Boyfriend) episode 1

SGJL 06 - Tae Kim Guide to Japanese and A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar Pt 2
SGJL 07 - Core 2k/6k Basic Pt 2
SGJL Drama - ex: 花より団子 (Boys Over Flowers) episode 1

SGJL 8 - RTK/KO2k1 556-1110
SGJL 9 - Tae Kim Guide to Japanese and A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar Pt 3
SGJL 10 - Core 2k/6k Basic Pt 3
SGJL Drama - ex: Tiger and Dragon episode 1

SGJL 11 - Tae Kim Guide to Japanese and A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar Pt 4
SGJL 12 - Core 2k/6k Basic Pt 4
SGJL Drama - ex: Nodame Cantabile episode 1

The Kana courses are basically complete. The Kanji course was complete then I had the genius idea of putting stories on each one. Since that takes about 30 minutes per 15 kanji lesson at the moment, I'll try to do a lesson a day pace. The Grammar course is Tae Kim and requires a bit of work (add vocabulary plus audio, add lesson pages edited for readibility). The Vocabulary course is Core 2k/6k and requires a lot of manual uploading of audio clips, but not much beyond that.

The cool part if done right is the Drama. This will be subs2srs with Japanese and English sides and audio clips (no images). Combined with Memrise's cool Memnote feature (think the shared stories on RevTK that made this website so popular), that means grouped explanation as to what the sentence is actually conveying in the show. In addition, I can share access rights to drama courses so the English translations can be updated improved.

Nukemarine: this is AWESOME! Making Memrise courses will introduce this way of learning to a whole new set of people, without the grossness of Anki! If there's any automation that could help, let us know.

It is good to see you, Nukemarine. The good stuff you have compiled earlier and share with us here.

Good to see you posting again, Nukemarine!
This is great! I've chatted with some people who like using Memrise, so now I can point them towards this instead of telling them they have to switch to Anki to use the stuff I recommend.

@aldebrn
'Grossness'? It's a bit of a pain to get used to, I guess.

Hey good to see you Nukemarine!  I don't think you were still active when I started here, but your thread changed my life.  I've changed and adapted over time to suit my needs, but as a beginner, knowing where to start, what materials to study and where to find them was a game changer.  I can't thank you enough for organizing a simple, comprehensive self-study curriculum.

Can somebody explain the major differences between memrise and anki?

I like anki because it seems more customizable and ease of adding material, but I've always been interested in memrise due to the memory champion + Princeton neuroscience connection.  I know that duolingo has some sophisticated features like feeding you easier cards when it senses that you are tired, etc but they don't have a japanese course yet afik.  I'm wondering if memrise are doing anything more sophisticated than simply using an old supermemo algorithm like anki.

Is it possible for users to export courses and learning progress in an open format? I had a quick look in the help but not seeing anything so far.

Out of all the software I use, Anki is among the few that I place the highest priority on being open-source.

There's an Anki addon for importing from Memrise.

I used Memrise for about a month when I was starting out. For me, Anki was superior in every way except for the default settings for learning cards (unusable in Anki, mediocre and unconfigurable in Memrise).

(2016-05-12, 5:14 pm)yogert909 Wrote: Can somebody explain the major differences between memrise and anki?

I like anki because it seems more customizable and ease of adding material, but I've always been interested in memrise due to the memory champion + Princeton neuroscience connection.  I know that duolingo has some sophisticated features like feeding you easier cards when it senses that you are tired, etc but they don't have a japanese course yet afik.  I'm wondering if memrise are doing anything more sophisticated than simply using an old supermemo algorithm like anki.

It has been a long time since I tried Memrise (a few years), so I don't know if they added anything new; from what I can tell, it's just a regular SRS; I think the draw is the format, community material, and the lack of customization.

Personally, I find Anki to be the superior of the two, because of the high amount of customization available.

(2016-05-12, 7:59 pm)sholum Wrote: It has been a long time since I tried Memrise (a few years), so I don't know if they added anything new; from what I can tell, it's just a regular SRS; I think the draw is the format, community material, and the lack of customization.

Personally, I find Anki to be the superior of the two, because of the high amount of customization available.

The draw to Memrise for me was the learning stage and the multiple choice in the mobile app. I like Anki's SRS scheduling and flexibility, though.

(2016-05-11, 9:46 am)aldebrn Wrote: Nukemarine: this is AWESOME! Making Memrise courses will introduce this way of learning to a whole new set of people, without the grossness of Anki! If there's any automation that could help, let us know.

Adding the audio and images are pain as they have to be done manually. In addition, I'm sure if I add a column to a course I'll have to manually add the information for that column. Not a show stopper but limits what I'm willing to do. Not sure how that can be automated but time will tell.

(2016-05-12, 5:14 pm)yogert909 Wrote: Can somebody explain the major differences between memrise and anki?

I like anki because it seems more customizable and ease of adding material, but I've always been interested in memrise due to the memory champion + Princeton neuroscience connection.  I know that duolingo has some sophisticated features like feeding you easier cards when it senses that you are tired, etc but they don't have a japanese course yet afik.  I'm wondering if memrise are doing anything more sophisticated than simply using an old supermemo algorithm like anki.

I found Memrise through DuoLingo and it's as you say in that it's a supermemo algorithm. However, I like that it uses a multiple choice format, offers options for tapping input (DuoLingo has this), and incorporates audio both in in offering three sound choices for the answer or giving the sound as the prompt. Works great with the iKnow/Cerego material from the limited amount I tested.

I don't think it's superior to Anki per se, but in chance to expose these great learning courses to more students then I think Memrise will end up being the better choice. A great system no one is using doesn't help.

Added Remembering the Hiragana in Three Hours course which includes embeds of the YouTube video series I did five years ago.

For those interested in how I did this vocabulary list, I made a full list of Hiragana including the glottal stop, voiced marked and dipthong characters in the Heisig Order as a .txt file. Created a .txt file of Core2k/6k/10k vocabulary words. Used the "Kanji Sort" perl program on the vocabulary list. Pasted that list in a spreadsheet, added additional columns (kanji word, english translation, optimized index). Sorted the entire list by Kana index then Optimized Index. After that was the sort of tedious process of getting top 3 vocabulary words that used that Kana and any of the previous Kana taught. Then came the process of Kana to Romaji conversion and filling in additional as needed.

While really low level compared to what we do on this forum, it should prove quite useful to any student of Japanese even if they don't follow the Heisig RTKanji method later.  Calling upon the iKnow/Cerego vocabulary pronunciation should prove popular instead of the IVONA voices normally used for such courses.

Added Remembering the Katakana in 3 Hours to the list. This was harder to do than I thought it would be at first. The sorting was done by doing the Katakana list in RTK then doing that same list as Hiragana and merge them for the sorting program. I then needed to pick out the Katakana specific words and top rank them when sorted by kana.  Decided to include non-katakana words to take advantage of the Core 2k/6k audio but always opted to katakana if it was available. Once I imported the sorted and edited list into Memrise I opted to do a Hiragana to Katakana testing and remove Romaji entirely. I figured, fuck it, you got your fill of Romaji with the Hiragana deck.

Overall, I think both of the Kana decks in Memrise should be very effective for beginners. It's a mix of recognition with reading and audio. There's no input but really people have the option on their own to write out words when first learning or to do it if they miss a word and the review pauses to show the missed card.

Anyway, after this the next few decks will not be as tedious since I'm not having to create word entries. However, there will be the tedious step of activating audio but that's not too bad. I just have to do it 12,000 times for the vocabulary plus gods knows how many times for the subs2srs drama decks.

Wow, I'm glad I checked this forum today lol. I was just about to start make a Memrise course with your order of Core with audio. I would love to work with you adding the audio files to your courses

For your Core 2k/6k Basic Pt 1 deck, are you aware that during reviews, it will be English to Kanji? Could you add a level where it is set to English Kanji so that when you are learning the word, you mostly see the kanji and during review, it is Kanji to English. As in, you see the kanji word at the top with English meanings as the multiple choice. Since my goal is to read Japanese, I like to learn words how they are because that is what I will be seeing as I read and not English. 

Also for your Pt 1, Level 2 and 3 seem to be in a Kanji to Audio format.

(2016-05-16, 7:53 pm)Rotasu Wrote: Wow, I'm glad I checked this forum today lol. I was just about to start make a Memrise course with your order of Core with audio. I would love to work with you adding the audio files to your courses

For your Core 2k/6k Basic Pt 1 deck, are you aware that during reviews, it will be English to Kanji? Could you add a level where it is set to English Kanji so that when you are learning the word, you mostly see the kanji and during review, it is Kanji to English. As in, you see the kanji word at the top with English meanings as the multiple choice. Since my goal is to read Japanese, I like to learn words how they are because that is what I will be seeing as I read and not English. 

Also for your Pt 1, Level 2 and 3 seem to be in a Kanji to Audio format.

I'm very limited in what Memrise allows to do with course review. At the moment has you connect two columns which for Core I selected Kanji vocab to English translation and then created a section for the sentences. The option to activate audio means it'll test audio to kanji and kanji to audio though for some reason it'll switch audio to English and English to audio. I've asked about how to control this among other things but it doesn't look like anything will change.

It's not perfect, but should still be functional. With the English translation as the question, you do have to search for a specific Japanese word among 7 others so that's a good skill to have.

I'll recheck Pt 1. It should be kana to romaji with audio. (edit: You were right. I switched them to test Japanese with English prompt. Would do the reverse but that would mean Japanese audio testing to Japanese text which is easier than Japanese audio to English meaning).

It's a really bad idea to start using Memrise, unless you plan to ditch it soon. It gives you too many reviews, lacks customization, and penalizes typos and you can't adjust vague questions, so you'll keep getting the same things wrong even when you know the answers. Moreover, a course creator can just delete a course, and I assume something bad might happen as a result (not sure what). And you can't edit if there are mistakes. And you can't do any of the great things anki has to offer.

The only good course to go with Memrise is one that doesn't use it long-term, just brute forcing basic vocabulary, and then going into extensive reading/listening mode and never using it again.

If you're going to learn Japanese, how can a mere Anki interface intimidate you?

(2016-05-20, 8:24 pm)rainmaninjapan Wrote: It's a really bad idea to start using Memrise, unless you plan to ditch it soon. It gives you too many reviews, lacks customization, and penalizes typos and you can't adjust vague questions, so you'll keep getting the same things wrong even when you know the answers. Moreover, a course creator can just delete a course, and I assume something bad might happen as a result (not sure what). And you can't edit if there are mistakes. And you can't do any of the great things anki has to offer.

The only good course to go with Memrise is one that doesn't use it long-term, just brute forcing basic vocabulary, and then going into extensive reading/listening mode and never using it again.

If you're going to learn Japanese, how can a mere Anki interface intimidate you?

I'm purposely going through the reviews with Memrise starting with the first course. I get what you're saying about too many reviews but so far it seems that's in the initial "learning" phase to get the flower meaning a couple of front to back, couple of back to front, audio to back, back to audio. After that it's learned and goes in the SRS method. There's also the option to skip the speed reviews and listening reviews and just worry about learning which should help. 

I'm not putting in any typing into the lessons so typos will not be an issue. If I can get the "tapping" to work to put sentence fragments in order, I'll activate that for grammar only. I even removed the RTK/KO2k1 kanji course requirement to enter the Kanji using an IME. Figured people can write down the reviewed kanji on their own during the lesson summary. No need to force someone to do it.

Just like with Anki, I do not intend to delete these course. Those with Anki can even download the Memrise courses with a plug-in though the existing decks would be a better option.

Finally, I'm not really doing it for people on this forum. Usually, people here know about Anki and will prefer that anyway. However, Memrise likely will have a wider audience and is easier to use and get into. If in doing these courses they find out about the Heisig method, Reviewing the Kanji website, Anki and these forums then that would be a win.

Just completed and uploaded SGJL 04 - Basic Grammar pt 1 for Memrise. Only part left is a couple of introduction screens explaining how to review that course and which ones to skip if needed.

How I put it together: First is Tae Kim's original Guide to Japanese. For the most part that stayed the same. Like the spreadsheet I posted earlier, I had went through Tae Kim and put entries from ADo(B/I/A)JG in roughly the Tae Kim order. After getting most the entries in Basic and some from Intermediate, I added the rest of Basic entries somewhere in there. Even without Memrise, that spreadsheet should be useful for those wanting a non-alphabetical way of going through ADoBJG. 

As I was finishing the Memrise course, I decided to add a vocabulary section. While there will be a vocabulary specific course with Core 2k/6k it seems reasonable to add a vocab section so one does not worry as much about words in the sentences. This was tedious to do as I went chapter by chapter through Tae Kim, copied all his vocab listings, did spreadsheet stuff to find and remove the 1400 duplicate vocab, did spreadsheet stuff to find similar vocab in Core 2k/6k list, then put listings plus audio on memrise.

I was hesitent to add A Dicitionary of Basic Japanese Grammar entries given copyright. However, I decided the example sentences mean little without the detailed explanations from the book much like the Tae Kim sentences mean little without the website. Since they're separate, if there is an issue those can be removed by Memrise without destroying the entire course.