ASL on Memrise – a plan of a dream
American Sign Language has long been one of the most requested new wikis to start on Memrise. Memrise is in fact pretty much perfectly set up to learn ASL, and we are super keen to get the wiki together. The only thing that has held us back in the past is how to go about...
How to Write in Japanese – a guest post from jlptbootcamp
If you are learning Japanese on Memrise, you have probably come across one of our most active and long standing contributors, jlptbootcamp. Other than adding and editing a good proportion of the words in the Japanese wiki, he also runs the invaluable blog, jlptbootcamp, which is full of crucial tips on how to pass the JLPT tests....
We just raised a million dollars from these guys to help the world learn!
We’re delighted to announce today that we have raised a million dollars from a wonderful set of investors to pursue our mission to make learning joyful. Now, not unreasonably, our dear community may not be that interested in how we keep the ship afloat, but in fact the character of the people who back a...
Happy Valentine’s Day, Memrisers!
Since language is the true food of love, and also because today is Valentine’s day, we decided to tee you up for all current and future romantic endeavours with a comprehensive guide to saying “I love you” in a hundred different languages. It’s difficult to understate the importance of this life-skill, so get to it! Never...
Cool new Memrise stuff to learn, accompanying today’s Observer
I’m pleased to be able to say that today’s Observer included a long supplement on memory written by yours truly – it’ll come onto the Guardian website tomorrow. It’s quite a fun piece, with lots of exercises to test and grow your memory, and a few inventive games exploring the re-discovery of neglected memories and...
Mems, as explained by William James
Memrise enthusiast and French child-psychologist Juliette Danjon brought this marvellous quote by William James to our attention today: “The art of remembering is the art of thinking; … when we wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind or a pupil’s, our conscious effort should not be so much to impress and...
The Christmas Creative Challenge!
It has been a pretty awesome first full year of operations for Memrise: tens of thousands of users have learned millions upon millions of words. Which means that trillions of neurons all over the world have been coaxed into shape and a veritable forest of memory flowers has been grown. We’re pretty stoked about this,...
Sunday Summary- Week 2 (a short history of Memrise)
This week, the Memrise team has splintered to the four corners of the globe. I therefore thought it might be a good moment, not least since we have been oddly silent on this blog about some of the bizarre locations from which we have operated, to give a brief history of our roaming existence- it...
Learn to read a sentence of Chinese in 3 minutes!
汉字好学! Do you have no idea what that means? Well allow me, for a moment to set off on what might appear to be a bit of a tangent and all will soon become clear. I want to talk about the way children learn, and the way that I believe that they *should* learn. Since...
Week 1: Sunday Summary
A few of our community have been wondering on the forums what we’re up to, so here’s a first instalment of what we’ll call the Sunday Summary- an end-of-week overview of what we’re working on, the state of our morale, our plans for the future and any anecdotes from the week’s work. First thing to...
5 lessons from the way that a child learns a new language
Children learn new languages with enviable speed and ease. I think that everyone is agreed on that. The received wisdom seems to be that when a child is surrounded by a new language, they simply absorb it like an eager little sponge, emerging effortlessly fluent within a few weeks. So admired is this magical ability...
Why childhood memories are dangerous
Childhood memory can be something of a treasure-trove for thinking about the mind. So much deep conceptual change happens in early childhood, and so little in adulthood, that childhood memories can be uniquely helpful in understanding what it is to have a truly different perspective, and so what is going on with the normal perspectives...
