What is Reddit's opinion of
Memrise?
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➔ Memrise website
By popularity on Reddit, this Service is:
100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Avoid Duolingo, it's dreadful, I honestly don't understand why anyone suggests it, the course is terrible and it's a gamification of language learning which hinders rather than helps IMO.
Instead use Nico's Weg, offered by DW, they also offer a 30 unit course as well, it should take you to A2 with ease providing you utilise other avenues such as text books, focus on grammar as well.
Memrise's course is decent from a vocab perspective, don't expect much more than that.
I've used the Colloquial German series books, I like them, with book one and two, you should get up to A2 with self-study.
I highly advise you find people you can talk to in German, everything you can achieve through online and book resources is great but if you can't actually converse, what's the point? Make penpals or go on italki.
For grammar, Lingolia is probably your best bet. It's completely free, the site's design is immaculate, and there's at least one exercise for every single lesson, which really helps in revising and solidifying knowledge. Kwiziq is another excellent choice that offers pretty much the same thing, but with fancy AI stuff that provides tailor-made lesson plans just for you. The only reason I rank it below Lingolia is because Kwiziq is a paid service, but it's pretty much unmatched if you have the money.
In terms of vocabulary, I personally don't find Anki to be as effective as people touted it to be. Memrise has been much more effective in my experience, as they combine both spaced repetition with numerous other methods (such as matching words to definition, actually typing up the word, etc.) to aid with memorization. Definitely worth checking out.
It's not new - I've finished it a long time ago...
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but I didn't know that they've released an official Slovenian course:
Sure! The Genki I vocab course is here, and the grammar course is here. If you click on the link to the profile of the person who made the course, they have equivalent courses for Genki II.
There's actually a ton of user made content on memrise, it's the real meat of the site. Unfortunately if you're using the app instead of the website, you can't actually find any of the courses. You can work on them once you've added them from the website, but if there's a way to add them from within the android app, I haven't found it.
No problem at all! First off, let me explain WHY flash cards work so well for this. It's pretty widely agreed on that the best way to do kanji flash cards is with the SRS method, which means Spaced Repetition System. This essentially means a card will show up less frequently if you keep getting it right, but will show up constantly until you stop getting it wrong. There are 3 main programs that I see people using for this, so I'll just go through and list them off.
Anki - By and far the most popular one, and even though I don't like it much, it's easy to see why everyone else loves it. It does what you need it to do, and it's easy to add/edit decks to it once you've gotten used to the program. If you're going to use Anki, I STRONGLY recommend Heisig's Remembering the Kanji books, because there's a very good RTK deck for Anki.
Memrise - Probably the second most popular. Very easy to use, but I don't think you can edit decks (unless you make your own). There's a wide selection of decks to choose from here, so just look around for ones with plenty of ratings. There might even be an RTK deck here.
Wanikani - My personal favorite. I don't like spending the time making that PERFECT deck or fucking around with Anki. Wanikani will just hold your hand the whole way through. The cons are that it's not free (the other two are) and that it has you on a forced slow pace through a single deck, so there's zero freedom there.
I hope that helps. Sorry if this is long-winded, I just get excited when it comes to Japanese study methods.
http://steven-kraft.com/projects/japanese/
This link is all you need. Seriously. Beyond a lifesaver. Drill it into your brain by power of sheer rote force.
That said, if you use memrise, this course covers some of the slightly more advanced common conjugations (and one or two uncommon ones): https://www.memrise.com/course/1593496/conjugation-mastery/
(Incidentally, the te-form is fairly easy to remember once you know the simple past form. Just change the た or だ into て or で. Example: 食べた becomes 食べて and 読んだ becomes 読んで, etc.)
/u/tagus, nu jävlar kommer du få ta del av de fuktigaste memesen på jorden, la crème de la crème, eller gräddens grädde som man brukar säga. De gräddigaste memesen du nånsin stött på, snubben. Lita på't!
p.s. Jag kan starkt rekommendera Memrise om du vill lära dig ett ordförråd som kommer ta till månen och tillbaka:
https://www.memrise.com/course/99412/8000-most-common-swedish-words-part-1-of-four/
(It's a link to the best way to learn the 8000 most used Swedish words, in case I was talking too much gibberish.)
Belter creole is amazing and there's a lot of ressources out there, just thought I'd try and show some of it - although my translation is... lacking.
"Inners always thinks belters are weak".
These are great: https://www.memrise.com/course/1102952/belter-creole/1/ and https://www.memrise.com/course/1476694/lang-belta-belter-creole-phrasebook/
And if you know some german and spanish, it's not too hard to pick apart.
Try this.
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It has the top 5000 most commonly used words sorted by frequency. So you'll get the top 1000 words first and if you decide you want to carry on, you won't have to start all over again on another course - just keep going with the next 4000!
Memrise is OK.
Duolingo is generally considered bad, but if you don't immediately let your eyes go to the word bank... and or you set it so it prompts you to type the answer all the time, then it's OK.
As others have said, vocabulary is the biggest hurdle. I taught LPP 2 years ago and made this memrise course by chapter groupings.
https://www.memrise.com/course/1143354/le-petit-prince-vocabulaire/
I also recommend the dialogue and action vocabulary memrise I made to familiarize readers with common usages of the passé simple:
https://www.memrise.com/course/1143380/dialogue-and-action-vocabulary/
I had a friend recommend me memrise, he says that the answers and how to say things in another language stay in his brain long after he has stopped studying but he can't explain how, that is not like other apps where he has to try really hard to remember what he studied
Oh wow! That's new! I hadn't used it for a month or so after completing the German tree. It was always completely free when I used it. Both browser and app. That sucks if your progression is dependant on paying for it. If you haven't already tried it, head over to memrise.com.
That is definitely free.
Try an optimized approach. Core 2k Optimized is first 2000 words of Core 10k sorted by kanji index of the first 2001.Kanji.Odyssey books. However, learn those 555 kanji in the KKLC order.
So, you learn 1/4 of KKLC but those 555 kanji just happen to cover 80% of kanji used in daily Japanese by frequency count. Since Core 2k is sorted by these kanji, you'll see only words using kanji you learned. Plus, they're introduced slowly so you notice onyomi/kunyomi and context much, much easier along with transitive/intransitive verb pairs and verb stem variants!
After 1000 words, learn another 555 of the 2k1KO index in KKLC order, and learn another 1000 words this time sorted with 1110 kanji. Lots of fun.
Ok, full-time language learner here.
If you haven't had experience with language learning before, I would suggest that you read Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner (quick piracy link).
IF you want to skip that (maybe you're just lazy), then I would suggest you do these two memrise courses:
After you do them, you will have gained basic Macedonian vocabulary. After that, start speaking immediately. Practice practice practice. Read, listen, every day.
It's sad that we don't have a corrections platform anymore, lang 8 died. What I mean is, after you finish those courses, come here on our sub and write a small essay of 300 words and have us correct your grammar and spelling.
Среќно!
If you're serious about this, then I'd suggest using Memrise to help you learn it.
My college uses it for it's foreign languages courses, and I myself use it for learning Swedish, but I've also seen some Sign Language courses on there. (Unfortunately, there isn't a Japanese Sign Language course, but there is ASL and BSL if you needed that.)
Sorry man, but it's not really possible to learn even conversational Chinese in a month. Or two. the videos on youtube of people who say they've done so are either:
-spending 12 hours a day in study.
-conning you by repeating canned lines they've learned and practiced dozens of times.
-Sherlockian geniuses.
-all of the above.
If you mean "survival Chinese" like the type you'd need at a restaurant or store, then yeah that's possible.
Although I think it should be a small part of a comprehensive learning approach, if you just need the basics Memrise is great.
restaurant survival is a good course I used when I first started.
apart from that Memrise's own Mandarin 1 course would be a good starting point.
Here's one option: Learn the 325 Kanji in Genki in RTK order. Skip over kanji that are not in that list, though feel free to add kanji that are primitives for kanji in that list.
Doing that takes only 1/6th the time, and lets you get into Genki using Kanji from the start. While doing Genki, if you want, start doing 10 kanji a day from kanji in RTK that you skipped.
Why do this: RTK is a better order to learn kanji in bulk since it sorts kanji by the parts that make them up. However, that means that commonly used kanji that have more components can be at the end of the list and less common kanji that are simple to write are at the front. With an abbreviated list, you get all those common kanji with benefit of speed.
Edit: Here's a Memrise course that does something similar, though it's with 555 most common kanji.
There is this Memrise work booklet with some phrases and words, the author pitched it as something an Inner might use to pick up some belter words.
Our beratnas over in r/LangBelta are also a group dedicated to learning some parts of the Belter Creole, so they will also have good resources.
Try Memrise, this course in particular is very high quality. Also make sure to get some immersion time: listen to Russian music, watch random Russian youtube videos, play games in Russian (even with English subtitles). I really love this video series for listening practice.
J'ai utilisé beaucoup de choses, mais je pense que j'ai trouvé un bon équilibre maintenant:
- Memrise: vocabulaire
- LearnRussian: tables de grammaire
- Duolingo: russe pratique
Je n'ai trouvé aucune plateforme pour apprendre le russe en français, alors je le fais en anglais. Ca a des désavantages sur lesquels je peux m'étendre si besoin, mais c'est quasiment incontournable pour apprendre gratuitement et avoir beaucoup de ressources à disposition (communauté, forums etc).
If you mean the flashcards on the actual duolingo site, then just review the flashcards after a certain number of lessons.
If you mean other flashcards, you can find corresponding duolingo flashcards for a lot of courses on memrise.
Found this site for Belter Swear Words. I don't know if this is taken from the Expanse novels, show, or both. There is Lang Belta subreddit: /r/LangBelta/
Personally I'd say get a full list of N5 and N4 kanji, and learn those in RTK order (maybe replace English keyword with a picture or clipart of the concept). Then redo your vocabulary using Core 2k/6k information to set up audio and close delete where you have to know how to say and spell the words with correct kanji.
For grammar, you can use this Memrise course for Shinkanzen Mastere N4 Grammar or maybe a Tae Kim anki deck that has audio for the example sentence.
So first, understand that this isn’t going to be quick of course, I’ve been studying for 1.5 years and I’m at like a 3rd grade level. It’s so rewarding though if you get past it.
The first thing I’d learn is Hiragana and katakana. Which if you aren’t familiar with I can explain but I’ll guess you who what they are for now. Try mnemonics for this and an app called Memrise. Memrise is also great for vocab, it uses a Spaced Repetition System and helps you remember them really so well. Also, for kanji, please please, I beg you, get a subscription to WaniKani, I’ll even link it below because this is really important along with the other stuff. It teaches you most of the kanji you need to live as an adult and has helped me so much. Just really remember to study away from class, all the apps and all, but also try to immerse yourself in the language as much as you can. Music, anime, dramas, and as much stuff as you can. Talk with people online too, the more you do it the better. If you don’t use it, you lose it, usually. Haha
The Japanese language, although scary at the beginning, was the best thing that I could have ever learned, and changed my life. Keep working at it, and don’t give up, it’ll pay off so well. I wish you luck! Ganbatte!
If you have any other questions let me know! TheSakuraDragon
If you're using Genki I and II, you'll find there's kanji lessons that start at chapter 3. However, those lessons are in the back of the book. Some teachers teach these along with the normal chapters while others hold off on kanji as you planned.
The Heisig method or equivalent are just ways to learn how to memorize the writing and meaning of kanji in bulk. After that, it makes learning the words (and pronunciation) that use those kanji much easier. There's benefits to it and a modified version of it can be done alongside Genki.
If you're interested, here's an Optimized RTK course on Memrise where I used 555 most common kanji (includes the 325 that Genki teaches). If you really want to, just "ignore" kanji that are not in Genki's list but I don't think it'll hurt much to learn those as well.
Personally, I advocate learning kanji early. Given I made the above course along with 60 hours of lessons on YouTube teaching 1110 kanji, that makes sense.
I don't like Memrise for vocabulary acquisition because it doesn't handle synonyms very well. You need to answer with the exact correct synonym in order to advance the card. If you answer with the incorrect synonym, then the card resets to back to 0.
This isn't a problem when you're a pure beginner and you don't know any synonyms. The problem grows as you advance in the language. You can try to fix this by making your own decks. But if you're going to do that, then you might as well use Anki, which offers so much more flexibility when it comes to making flash cards.
However I do like Memrise for pronunciation and typing training. I highly recommend this course: https://www.memrise.com/course/534607/every-ttmik-lesson-levels-1-10/
Seconded. Get the free app on your phone, it's childs play.
Of course, you should use other things too; Redhoop, Memrise, NoExcuseList and whatever else you find in this thread.
But I'd say follow one or two courses at a time rather than bouncing around loads of courses. Start one or two, finish those completely, then move on and do another to learn whatever they first course may have missed, or not have taught as well.
I did 10000 most frequent words course on Memrise. Here is the link: https://www.memrise.com/course/173195/top-10000-words-part-1/
However it's translated to English and some words, especially verbs, are not intuitive because of that. Additionally I was translating Russian songs, watching tv series (eg. Brigada), reading Russian news and occasionally speaking with Ukrainians. Btw. I found that Russian is quite popular among Serbs so maybe you can find someone to practice with
I'm puttering around with a Memrise course for Gregg Notehand if anyone is interested in taking a look. I'm not sure if it would be useful at all, but there you have it.
I have a couple of Memrise courses that might help:
Paradigms of Ancient Greek Verbs
Principal Parts of Ancient Greek verbs
If you're not already familiar with the Memrise format, you can take the courses on a mobile device, but with some limited functionality. The courses are optimized for an internet browser (which lets you practice typing in Greek). You can turn off audio if you don't like hearing the pronunciation.
I also have a course for the principal parts of Modern Greek Verbs as well, but you may not be interested in that.
Memrise baratna ;) https://www.memrise.com/course/1476694/lang-belta-belter-creole-phrasebook/ Loads of phrases. Also sub to r/langbelta theres some per episode analysis on there that helps. Honestly, i'd kill for a proper book on Lang Belta.
Honestly, there is no SUPER textbook that will teach you to speak Russian. If there was, everyone would use it by now. If you are one of those extraordinary people that can manage their time, organize their self-study, and learn just with a book then you will be fine with any book really.
If you want to know my favorite book for beginners? I absolutely LOVE Princeton's course. Their grammar explanations are so clear. The tables are one of the best I've seen. The best part? It's absolutely free to download the pdfs and audio. You can do it here: http://downloads.tuxfamily.org/cytrussian/Course_01/
It's a zipfile, so don't be afraid to download it. It's just a zip with a pdf and audio. Princeton released this course a while ago and while looking for the link for you, I saw they even started putting flashcards on memrise with real native speaker voices for it. You can see them here: https://www.memrise.com/course/68456/princeton-russian-course-sla101-2/
Now, if you are a complete beginner you need to realize that if you are serious about learning Russian, you need to work regularly in several areas: reading, listening, speaking, writing, and grammar/vocabulary. You will not start speaking Russian just by doing written exercises. You will not be able to read Russian if you just catch phrases from native speakers. You will not understand people if you don't spend enough time listening.
It all depends on your goals, motivation, attitude, mind set, personality. I don't know enough to give you personalized recommendations and as you can tell I could really go in depth and even when I write these success plans for my students very few stick to them, because let's be honest...learning to speak a language fluently, especially one as challenging as Russian, is very HARD work and takes a lot of time and consistency.
I hope you check out the textbook! Best of luck to you!
I'm one of those that learned all 2041 kanji from RTK first. It was my experience doing that which lead to an idea like RTK Lite (JLPT 2 kanji in RTK order) and even RTK Ultralite (JLPT 3 kanji in RTK order). Basically learn kanji that account for 75% of use by frequency, learn basic Japanese using those, then go back for more kanji later.
Anyway, this RTK Optimized Memrise course follows along those lines. The kanji it teaches are drawn from Coscom's 2001.Kanji.Odyssey book 1 which are 555 most frequently used kanji (75% by use). That's a little between what N4 and N3 require so is a good number for beginners. If you want, you could even ignore kanji that aren't in Genki I and II.
Time to fluency varies widely depending upon your background and your experience learning languages. If you're already fluent in Japanese, then you'll be at the bottom of the range, and if Korean is your first foreign language, then you'll be at the top of the range.
A1-A2: 300-900 hours
- TTMIK 1-5, read the PDFs and then go through this course: https://www.memrise.com/course/534607/every-ttmik-lesson-levels-1-10/
- Buy TTMIK's "Korean Verb Guide" and transcribe all the sentences.
- Buy Gabriel Wyner's "Fluent Forever" and also his "Korean Pronunciation Trainer".
- Learn 1000 high frequency words with Anki and mnemonics.
- Buy Darakwon's "Korean Grammar In Use: Beginner", and turn all the example sentences into cloze-deleted flash cards in Anki.
B1: 600-1800 hours
- TTMIK 6-10.
- Buy TTMIK's "My Weekly Korean Vocabulary" (48 week set) and transcribe all the sentences.
- Buy Darakwon's "Korean Pronunciation Guide" and shadow all the dialogs for intonation.
- Learn 2000 more high frequency words (total 3000) with Anki and mnemonics.
- Buy Darakwon's "Korean Grammar In Use: Intermediate", and turn all the example sentences into cloze-deleted flash cards in Anki.
- Do language exchanges with native Korean speakers and get corrections on your speaking/writing.
B2: 1200-3600 hours
Learn by intensively studying native materials. Read books, listen to podcasts, write journals, speak with native speakers, consume native media.
C1: 2400-7200 hours
Learn by extensively studying native materials.
There are many other things you can and should do aside from building your vocabulary, but I would strongly recommend that you continue to use memrise. Try this course which contains the top 5000 most frequently used German words. I did a similar course, but this one has nicely sorted it in order of frequency, so you can easily skip to a level where you are not repeating already familiar words.
I have completed the course of 5000 and find my comprehension of written and spoken German has improved massively. Now when I watch German TV shows, or read the news, the fact that I am able to recognise more words means that I can often piece together what is being said, even if I can't translate it perfectly.
It's not that the keywords picked are wrong, it's just they don't always align with translations/interpretations others have for those kanji.
If you want to be technical, there are no English words for kanji because English does not use kanji. What really happens is "Japanese word uses YYY kanji. The Japanese word is usually translated ZZZ in English. So YYY kanji can have ZZZ keyword". Cool. However, in some cases its "A number of Japanese words use YYY kanji and others. The various Japanese words have a number of English translations/meanings. So YYY kanji can have a number of English meanings depending on other kanji used with it". This is where the arguments start since there's no straight meaning associated with some kanji.
Anyway, don't worry about that. RTK is about teaching you Kanji in English, then using that Kanji knowledge later to learn how Japanese use Kanji. KKLC follows similar methods. A large number of people including myself have used these to good success.
I recommend though that you don't follow RTK 100% and instead alter it based on user feedback from the RTK community. What I did was create this RTK Memrise course that teaches the most common 555 kanji in RTK order, and it offers additional info such as other meanings and even Japanese words that use them. There's also 30 hours of YouTube videos teaching all of these in the RTK manner.
> Duolingo is one of the few language-learning programs that is good, free, and mobile.
Memrise Arabic 1-7
It's free. Native audio. Teaches the script. Mobile.
I skipped Kanji and only focused on every other learning aspect i.e (grammar, listening, etc) for 3 years. I only started learning Kanji a few months ago (not including the ones you naturally pick up by repetition/seeing). I also went through Genki 1,2, and Tobira. Since I skipped Kanji, I had to use Phone/Dictionaries for almost everything/
I wouldn't recommend skipping it/delaying it like I did, just do it. My reason was because i'm addicted to learning Japanese grammar.
I use memrise, and I recommend it; my profile is here:
What I did was use the memrise to anki add on for anki to transfer the Korean Made Simple course on memrise.
Here is the memrise course: https://www.memrise.com/course/787975/korean-made-simple-1-vocabulary/
The importer is available here: https://github.com/wilddom/memrise2anki-extension
You’ll need to use the code from this page: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1959202519
Once you get it installed you’ll find the importer under the tools menu. It’s not exactly easy, but I managed after a couple tries!
I think Duolingo is great. I use it everyday. I've also been using Memrise to build vocabulary. The Swedish Institute released a free online course this year and I'm finding it very helpful as well. It's a joint project between universities and university teachers across Sweden so it's pretty legitimate.
Learning to read is absolutely the first step. After that, there are lots of places to start learning. A few that I use and found helpful / enjoyable:
Korean Cyber University Program
Memrise (for vocabulary)
Happy learning! (edited for formatting)
May I recommend something else instead?
Memrise, is a wonderful tool for learning most languages out there, often filled with content made by people trying to teach people their own language. It has plenty of useable tutorials in Japanese, which should make you conversational.
Alternatively, Duolingo is a classic recommendation. They don't teach Japanese, and so wouldn't assist in the learning of the words /u/Mrtechnical77 don't understand, but do provide themselves as a great option for learning languages, and new languages are often added.
There are also thousands of apps and videos on youtube out there which assist in the learning of a language. All of which are free, and in some cases can be more helpful than Rosetta Stone (the software, not the real thing which helped us discover how to understand hieroglyphics).
While I'm sort of feeling that you're joking, based on the fact that you linked him a chinese tutorial and that Rosetta stone seems to be mainly hated by Redditors, I figured this would be a good place to plug some links for those interested.
However, in /u/Mrtechnical77's case, watching a bit of anime, or looking up in urban dictionary might help drastically more.
Feel free to join us over at /r/language if you're as interested in lingo as myself!
Don't just wish, learn it!
This post on /r/languagelearning has some good sources for online learning
Scottish Gaelic is also coming to duolingo some point in the future.
And while doing that, the most important thing is immersion. Listen to Scottish Gaelic songs, read Scottish gaelic literature. If you seriously want to learn Scottish Gaelic, then go ahead.
I have been learning French for 65 days for about 2-5 hours a day and I use Duolingo as my base but I also use other resources such as:Lingvist, Memrise, Clozemaster, AnkiSRS flashcards, YouTube, TV5Monde and many others.
So far I'm really satisfied with my progress, I can read the news and understand them even if I don't know all the words however this is mostly because our brains are very good at filling out missing information.
My production is behind quite a bit because I don't practice it enough but I'm not in a hurry, my vocabulary is improving so I can expose myself to more French media.
Overall, I think Duolingo is a good starting point and since it's free there's no reason not to use it along with other methods.
Some more tips:
Use the website and not the app
Speak the sentences out loud after the robot
Duo doesn't teach you enough grammar so when you encounter something new google it or ask a question
Use the spaced repetition, go back to old lessons so you don't forget them
If you encounter a hard sentence, write it down so you can review it later, also write your own notes
Even when not actively learning you should try thinking and describing things around you in French
> For reference, I'm a white American trans woman who does not speak Chinese.
Start learning the absolute basics. Memrise Chinese. You can learn a lot of basic conversational things fast.
> I'm out to my employer, but I'm traveling on my old passport and will be presenting as a guy at least part of the time, I'm not super passable as a guy any more though.
Stay presenting as a guy the whole time. You'll be passable as a guy there if you try to pass as a guy.
> I'd love to be able to get out and about, and possibly meet local queer people.
I would advise against that, unless you meet them online first, but, you're throwing yourself into a politcal fray that is going to see you as an outright foreigner. You lack completely all langauge and cultural knowledge to get involved.
> Any thoughts have, helpful hints, or funny stories?
Consider it your final trip as presenting as a man, enjoy the food, see some interesting things, stay out of anything that is a political hot spot. If you love them, when you come back, start learning their language furiously then, but now you're only going to get yourself into trouble.
I always thought bosmang was creole for boss man, used to refer to the leader/captain. Diogo uses it when talking to Ashford for example.
https://www.memrise.com/course/1476694/lang-belta-belter-creole-phrasebook/3/
You could try buying children's learning materials in Chinese and work your way up.
Or you could try Memrise. You can go through HSK level by level, word by word. This won't help you to learn to write, but you will be able to read. My tip is to learn pinyin, too, that way you can type in Chinese.
I hit foreigners who want to learn to read all the time, but they almost never end up doing it because it's crazy difficult and almost useless outside Thailand. If you aren't an immigrant, why would you go to the effort? I know that I would never have gotten to my level of reading/writing proficiency (which most foreigners consider fluent) without being required to do it for my work. But if I hadn't been required to learn Thai, I also wouldn't have come to Thailand ... because it's not useful elsewhere.
Edit: relatedly, does anyone have a good resource for Royal vocab? It's pretty much the only thing I've never learned.
Edit: good to fill in holes https://www.memrise.com/course/320395/thai-frequency-top-4000-words/
I also made a brief course for Ostron here :)
https://www.memrise.com/course/1598498/ostron-script-warframe/1/
Additionally, I will be making a course for Solaris United’s (Fortuna) language. It will be released with the update :)
RTK does not teach readings. That should happen when you begin learning vocabulary that use the kanji you learned in RTK. When studied RTK, I had 2500 memorized at my peak which meant I could write the kanji from memory if given the English keyword with 90% or higher accuracy (Anki stat). That also included ~4000 vocabulary, though only 1000 or so kanji had 2 or more entries to get the reading(s) down.
I recommend RTK Optimized, which is learning 555 of the most common kanji in RTK order. Follow up with 1000 most common vocabulary that use either those kanji or kana only. Then go and learn another 555 kanji, and another 1000 vocabulary that are kana only or use those 1110 kanji. Do it again for 450 more kanji, then another 450 kanji.
Here's a Memrise course I created for RTK Optimized. Here's a 37 hour video series I made to teach those 555 kanji as well.
These were the ones I was doing for a while:
https://www.memrise.com/course/1105/speak-esperanto-like-a-nativetm-1/ https://www.memrise.com/course/1106/speak-esperanto-like-a-nativetm-2/
They are associated with a deleted account, though, so if there are more, I wouldn't be able to find them.
I can't recommend enough the 'Buntús Cainte course on Memrise](https://www.memrise.com/course/175401/beginner-spoken-irish-01-20-buntus-cainte/). It teaches you a very high standard of natural spoken Irish and it's all done by native speakers. It starts you off by learning different words and phrases so you can talk about the weather, what could be more Irish!
It doesn't go into any grammar so it might be worth getting a grammar guide as well to fill in the gaps.
If you don't like using Memrise (which is free), you can buy the books and use them that way.
You can use this as your base and supplement it with other grammar and vocabulary. I also recommend Raidió na Gaeltachta because that although you won't understand much at all for a long time, your brain will be secretly storing away all that information about pronunciation.
Best of luck, and PM me if you want any more details!
I've tended to use this list:
https://www.memrise.com/course/388159/oxford-university-mods-latin-vocab/
The levels are graded in order of increasing rarity and should definitely cover most of Cicero and Ovid. It's inevitable that you'll find some bizarrely rare words in the course of studying an author like Catullus - most vocabulary lists won't have cause to give you scyphus (cup), faginus (beechen) or irrumo (facefuck). The best you can do is give yourself a solid grounding in the basics from a list like the one above, and not feel disheartened at having to look up the rarer ones as you read.
This site also has handouts that cover Ovidian and Ciceronian vocabulary: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/101/index.html
Use SRS software like Anki, Memrise, or iKnow.
Looks like someone there's already decks for Adventures in Japanese on Memrise.
https://www.memrise.com/course/258460/learn-penang-hokkien/
That's the only source to learn Hokkien that I know. It doesn't matter if it's Medan/Penang Hokkien, both variants are similar.
Let me tell you what, my dad is a native Hokkien speaker, I'm pretty conversational in Mandarin and have learned 10+ languages, hang out with Medan friends who speak Hokkien, and I still cannot speak Hokkien and can only understand common words and when my Medan friends use Indonesian loanwords after all these years of learning Hokkien. Btw, the Hokkien that southeast Indonesians speak is different from Taiwanese or Mainland Hokkien, my dad cannot only understand half of Taiwanese Hokkien when he went to Taoyuan airport.
You should learn either Indonesian or Mandarin instead, you can't find a monolingual Hokkien speaker anymore.
Heisig's book "Remembering the Kanji" does a couple of things. It lets you learn Kanji in English fairly fast (about 15 to 20 characters an hour). It also lets you memorize the writing of kanji as a byproduct of the visual mnemonics it uses.
What it doesn't teach is how Japanese pronounce kanji in their language. This is reserved for later, usually when you learn vocabulary that use kanji. Based on personal experience, this part is easier because you're not worried about the kanji (you already memorized that part), and instead just need to attach that symbol to what the Japanese call that word. Soon you find out kanji has made reading so much easier because kanji relate not just pronunciation but meaning.
As /u/ARandomKid781 mentions, I did create a Memrise course and 30 hours of video for Heisig's RTK, but with a twist. Instead of taking 150 to 200 hours studying 2041 kanji before getting into Japanese, it teaches 555 most common kanji. Those 555 kanji are the most common and account for 75% of all kanji use by frequency. The next 555 kanji gives you only a 15% increase on that (basically 150 kanji is 50%, 555 kanji is 75%, 1110 kanji is 90%, 2200 kanji is 98%, aka diminishing returns that happens in all languages). Anyway, spend 30 to 40 hours learning 555 kanji then spend 100 hours learning basic grammar and vocabulary before moving over to learning more kanji.
If, after seeing all those comments about how you shouldn't worry about it, you still want to be able to code from memory, check out MemRise. If none of those lessons are what you want, you can create your own and use their quiz system.
Personally, I find it helpful to intentionally study or memorize functions.
I had hellish trouble with bulk memorization, until I got into Memrise. It's addictive, with how it's gamified, so I highly recommend it. You can get the same core "active ingredient" out of any SRS system (i.e. Anki), but the whole points and levels system keeps me doing it - and there are tons of premade decks.
i find this course is particularly good vocab-grinding
https://www.memrise.com/course/92902/the-ultimate-kanji-course/
sign up, start pounding away at that course, and you're set for a lot of vocab with minimal effort.
How about a compromise then? First, load up Rikaichan or Rikaikun so you can easily translate almost any Japanese. Now, use that with online apps when you're tested with kanji or kana words.
Now, if you demand Romaji, can I assume you're ok with speaking Japanese properly? I mean, you're not going to bitch about having to know how to pronounce car in Japanese and point to the right English word if you hear Dog in Japanese? I ask cause you seem to be bitching about learning 56 characters while you'll need to understand (listening and speaking) 2000 - 6000 words for just basic to intermediate understanding. That's not counting grammar.
Anyway, with Rikaikun you can bypass the annoying Japanese stuff in this Memrise vocabulary course and just need to type in the answer using an English keyboard with a Japanese IME.
Beyond that, look into Pimsleur or create your own elite Anki deck where you ran all the horrible Japanese words into a Kanji to Romaji converter so you can learn so much faster than us poor souls that stupidly bothered to learn kana and kanji alongside Japanese proper.
The Japanese course is still being developed right now.
While you wait for Duolingo to release the Japanese course, you can do Memrise's Japanese 1-3 courses here.
More practice on Genki you ask?
Genki 1:
For Genki 2, try this:
I was bored and was checking out what courses memrise has, so I found those. I went through every single grammar point in there to see it's correlation to Genki series.
It's pretty much everything, and it also has explanations.
It's really unfortunate the creator didn't make a N3, N2, or N1 deck because I was going to check those out too.
No Memrise yet? Memrise is way better than Duo in my opinion. At least for expanding vocabulary. Plus there's about a thousand courses in just Spanish. https://www.memrise.com/
Busuu is another really great resource, but I think it's greatness is in the ability to get your writing critiqued by native speakers. The actual learning course isn't anything special, it's very similar to Duo but requires a pro account (paid) to get the good lessons.
https://lingvist.io/ currently only have English and French courses but they've indicated that they'll have a Spanish course in the future
While these are great for beginners, I would suggest getting a proper grammar book rather than using Duolingo or Memrise as your only form of teaching.
Memrise is really helpful for that sort of thing. Also, you could consider finding novels to read in spanish if you are at a developed enough level. Hope that helps!
There's a free app on iOS and Android called 'Russian Cyrillic 3 hour mastery'. It teaches the alphabet through videos, and it also teaches you basic vocabulary. I would really recommend putting Duolingo on hold until you get a firm grip of the alphabet.
Memrise also teaches the alphabet through videos of native speakers, and it's more interactive than the video series (but less indepth). The Memrise app isn't free, but the desktop version largely is
>Memrise (https://www.memrise.com/) This is another language one. You do actually have to pay for it,
Really? I've got to >5,000,000 points (don't ask) and didn't pay a penny. It's just the annoying advert when you load up the site. Is that about the app?
Anki, Memrise, or another SRS program that you like for vocabulary.
If you don't/won't use such programs, then old fashioned paper flashcards still work, just not as effectively.
Daily reading/listening practice for grammar. (At first this will probably just be the dialogues in your textbook. That's okay. As you find things you can understand those are fine too.)
Including example sentences in your flashcards (SRS or otherwise) helps with grammar also, as does making sure grammatical words and phrases like のほうがいい, から、べき、ながら、etc. are included.
https://apps.ankiweb.net/ (SRS 'flashcard' program).
https://www.memrise.com/ (another SRS 'flashcard' app).
Memrise killed the majority of their userbase when they pulled this shit: https://www.memrise.com/decks-by-memrise/ I can still access the community-created courses that are on my learning list, but if I try to add new ones they don't appear.
[https://www.memrise.com/](Memrise) is pretty good for vocabulary. There are plenty of courses made by both Memrise and members of the community, and you can make your own too.
The focus is vocabulary and not grammar but some of the courses might have some and there's no reason why you can't make your own.
Wow, thank you for being open-minded with your question. We were happy to answer, and genuinely glad to have you in the community - you wouldn't have been downvoted into oblivion in /r/LangBelta. If you'd like to learn more, stick around on /r/LangBelta, join the Lang Belta Discord channel, or watch #LangBelta on Twitter.
If you're an interested beginner also just released a new version of the Lang Belta Phrasebook course on Memrise, which introduces you to some basic communication quickly and is fun.
I liked Executive Mandarin, though I haven't been there in several years now. It seems that they no longer publish schedules or prices on their website... If you wind up there, feel free to use the vocabulary list I added to Memrise- it matches their textbook (or did, when I was there).
RTK is short for Remembering the Kanji, which is book by James Heisig meant to teach 2200 kanji sorted by components that make up the kanji. He slowly teaches components, then shows new kanji that use that component and all previously taught components.
The idea works even for smaller lists like N5 and N4, as you skip kanji not in that list as you go through RTK. At most, you might learn extra kanji that are higher JLPT level, but are actually used as parts of other kanji listed in N4 and N5.
This Memrise course (and associated video series) teaches 555 kanji on this idea.
You're probably better doing a different resource like Tae Kim for grammar and Core 2k Optimized for vocabulary. Here's versions I made for Memrise for Tae Kim and Core 2k but there are decks for Anki as well out there (with native audio for Tae Kim now).
My recommendation is half of Tae Kim, 500 words of Core 2k optimized, other half of Tae Kim, next 500 words of Core 2k optimized, parts 1 and 3 of Shinkanzen Master N4, next 500 words of Core 2k, part 2 and final test of Shinkanzen Master N4, next 500 words.
The Core 2k Optimized is sorted by the 1110 kanji for 2001.Kanji.Odyssey but don't let that dissuade you. Those 1110 kanji account for 92% of kanji use by frequency (hell, the first 555 kanji is at 78%).
PS: Don't over-kanjify. Just because something can be written with kanji does not mean it should. It can look weird or unnatural if you don't do it right.
For all of you peeps out there studying the hard sciences, I made a deck of flashcards on the GHS symbols in Memrise. Very boliao, yes i know hahah.
Coming up next are the 9k chinese characters! especially to all of you chinese learners out there! but that'll take a long time to finish tho (still 3k in onli)
feel free to offer any suggestions/criticisms about the flashcards
edit: also do sound out any inaccuracies
This list of some of the most commonly used Cantonese words has been really helpful to me as a starting point. Your girlfriend should be able to help you with pronouncing the tones.
Personally I've been using these 3 courses to grow my vocabulary: - https://www.memrise.com/course/33/introductory-french-vocab/ - https://www.memrise.com/course/1189/intermediate-french/ - https://www.memrise.com/course/43618/further-intermediate-french/
For a total of 2908 unique words/groups of words.
I suppliment this by making my own course of words I don't know/learn in my lessons/read in books/songs/the news/tv/films/etc...
I use forvo.com and wordreference.com to grab audio clips for the self made courses.
I honestly think that come B2 level you'd almost be better of creating your own courses as you come across words/phrases you don't know... But then again I'm not B2 yet so take my opinion with plenty of grains of salt :)
Great question!
Learning different bird songs. And then going for walk and hearing all the different birds and knowing what each one was was amazing. I've still only got to level 8 out of 45 though!
Awesome. I'm not good at ASL either, but I'm trying to learn it because I have speech issues. I know for me, when someone tries to communicate with me rather than at me, it makes my day (sometimes even my whole week!). Genuinely a priceless feeling.
Memrise has ASL courses; it's a DuoLingo type style, if that would help :)
I think the most important thing is to have a clear plan of what you're doing.
Initially, I did three hours a day (I do a lot because I'm going to Japan next year (hopefully on a working holiday visa and want to be able to speak the language relatively well..)) and whilst I didn't get burned out I could tell I wasn't getting as much done as I should have been in that amount of time due to losing focus.
I then made a plan, I do 15 minutes of vocabulary work (memrise, personally) to start with, then I get at least one lesson in a chapter of Genki I completed, and finally I finish it off with around an hour of Kanji work/10 kanji per day. (I use Remembering the Kanji + Kanji.koohii too, so good!)
All in all it actually takes me around the same amount of time, sometimes longer, but because I'm splitting it up and planning out each step with clear goals in mind I stay much more focused.
On weekends I get my vocabulary out of the way and then do a lesson of Genki I, followed by some gaming/TV, then back to work for a bit with some Kanji or another lesson in the book. Rinse and repeat.
What also helps me is that I have good support with this, my brother is 100% behind me with it so when I ask him to nudge me to get back to work he always does and that helps me immensely.
Here's a Memrise course based on Shinkanzen Master N4 Grammar. Just do the courses related to the particles you want to test.
Here's the Shinkanzen Master N4 Grammar book that I put on Memrise. The verb section (first 9 lessons) should fit what you're looking for.
Hey! I run the Orokin course on Memrise. If you were interested in learning, you can sign up for a free account using the link below. =]
https://www.memrise.com/course/425296/tennobet-academy/
I didn't make it to Tennocon this year...so glad to hear the Learning Orokin room filled up! It's one of my favorite aspects of the game.
N4 you'll need about 2000 vocabulary, 150 to 200 grammar points and about 350 kanji. I don't know Wanikani's kanji layout, but likely the first 350 cover you there. I do recommend merging Core 2k with Genki. Basically, learn 1000 vocab, do half of Genki II, 500 vocab, second half of Genki II, last 500 vocab. Should be more fun and less grindy.
For fun, get the Kanzen Master N4 Grammar book and try this Memrise course based on it to help prep for the test (and reinforce grammar knowledge).
Also, if you have the book consider this Shinkanzen Master N4 Grammar course on Memrise. A couple others and myself took 30+ hours transcribing and formatting the questions to create this. I still haven't gone through it entirely to pick up the typos (that'll take another 3 weeks or so), but it's more than functional.
If you do use the course and spot a typo, let me know on this thread for the course.
Having an SRS of example sentences for grammar terms is a great idea. I believe decks like that for Genki already exists so consider that. A good option if it exists is "fill in the blank' where you have to choose the correct answer.
While not Genki, here's a Memrise course for Shinkanzen Master N4 Grammar that demonstrates how you can do this in a number of ways (conjugation, multiple choice, order selection). For Genki I, that would be the first 9 lessons (verb conjugations) and those past lesson 40 (page 92) which also covers Genki I grammar concepts.
For Vocabulary, while Genki teaches them, Core 2k is great for the audio and example sentences. Try this: Genki I lesson 1-6 then learn 500 words from Core 2k. Then lessons 7-12 and next 500 words from Core 2k. Then Genki II 13-18 followed by another 500 words. Finally the last set of lessons and last set of 500 words. Here's Core 2k set divided into 500 word groups and sorted by kanji for ease of learning.
sure, start off with sgjl 01 if you know nothing, but sgjl 03 if kanji is your game, sgjl04 for grammar for sure. https://www.memrise.com/user/Nukemarine/courses/learning/
edit: it for sure has stuff for advanced players, the lessons go up to 26 or so!
Not a photocopy, but here's a spreadsheet of the indexes. It doesn't have the 9 lessons for verb conjugations but that should be fine.
If you're interested, I'm slowly creating a Memrise SKM N4 Course. If you or anyone else ever get the book and want to assist typing in the practice sentences so I can copy them over to the course, I won't complain.
It's how I got started and I'm very glad I finished it. It's a great introduction. Then I did a bunch of sentences at Clozemaster and now I'm doing this memrise course.
English is my native language and as a child prior to Junior High, I doubt I was formally taught grammar rules. It was more just reading and spelling. Sentence diagramming in 7th grade helped open up a more nuanced understanding of a language kids technically mastered at age 5.
Anyway, yes, you could learn a language by building a base then using it daily via immersion. Japanese and Korean though will be tough due to their radically different use of grammar (plus Japan's writing system being another hurdle). The guy that does the "Japanese in a Year" vlog seems to be taking this route but he's being much more structured about it.
Also, if you're interested in a more structured, self-study approach then consider Suggested Guide for Japanese Literacy course series I posted to Memrise. Ultimately, it's meant to get people into Japanese Drama Immersion courses and learn much more with real Japanese.
I learned/memorized all the characters from the book prior to learning Japanese proper as a part time hobby, so it's not just for people majoring in Japanese or along the way. That said, it just might not be for you so might as well return it.
The main purpose of RTK in my opinion is learn Kanji as if they're an English concept, and to learn them in an order that's based on the primitives/radicals that make up the Kanji. The idea then is you'll be like a native Chinese or Korean person learning Japanese in that you'll know many of the commonly used characters even if you don't know how Japanese use it for their language.
If you want, there are abbreviated courses that follow the RTK concept. Here's a Memrise course I put together that covers 555 of the most common kanji in RTK order. It includes 30 hours of video going over each one so it should be interesting.
memrise.com is a good place to start learning some chinese charcters. When you just start lots of the charcters have small stories to help you remember them. As the OP stated, person in the field, person pregnant, happens throughout most of the language.
TTMIK isn't comprehensive, but I've gone through 9 units and I'm reading novels meant for native speakers sooo it'll get you pretty far. I really like using this memrise course for memorizing grammar sentences which I think is much better than trying to memorize rules. I think the Evita sentence deck for anki takes a lot of sentences from TTMIK too if you'd prefer to stick with anki. Admittedly, memrise can be a little frustrating but I'm still using it instead of switching fully to anki because I already did so much of the TTMIK deck by the time I was reminded anki exists and didn't want to redo it.
9 units of TTMIK works out to roughly halfway through the Korean In Use intermediate textbook. I plan on switching to KGIU for more advanced grammar after I finish unit 10 of TTMIK.
TTMIK also doesn't have very much vocab, so that's a separate thing to worry about... I use the Evita vocab deck and find other random words in books and webtoons.
I highly recommend using this memrise course along with it! It has the audio for example sentences from the different lessons. I ignored all the vocab cards and ones without audio but there are still like 3000 after ignoring those that have been great for memorizing grammar sentences for me.
After getting through 9 units of TTMIK, I've started reading a novel and I've only had to look up grammar a couple times in nearly 100 pages! Of course vocab is another matter haha
Someone made a memrise course with all the vocab from the DLI Russian Basic Course. This is what I use to study my vocab. Added bonus, they have an app that lets you study and quiz yourself on the go.
https://www.memrise.com/course/738326/dli-russian-basic-course/
https://www.memrise.com/ worked for me until HSK 3. After that you should be able to read simple articles and learn new words from texting and simple articles.
app.decipherchinese.com is great is you have some fundamentals
Find a native speaker to help you, Hellotalk and Interpals have serious and friendly people.